Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. 47 



Bunsen himself did nothing. His was the duty of extending the 

 boundaries of knowledge without reference to its application. Two 

 sets of men, he used to say, were needed, investigators and those who 

 applied scientific discoveries to useful ends. To him belonged the 

 higher work, and he often spoke with undisguised amusement and 

 astonishment of persons who, in the name of science, devoted all 

 their energies to 'mere money making. 



In 1836 Bunsen was appointed to the Chair of Chemistry in the 

 Polytechnic School, at Cassel ; two years later he became Professor in 

 the University of Marburg. There he remained until 1851, when for 

 a short time he went to Breslau, and in 1852 he was called to fill 

 Gmelin's chair at Heidelberg, a quiet and beautiful spot where he 

 spent the rest of his life, refusing pressing invitations to remove to 

 what many consider the greater attractions of a metropolis. 



Although he had accomplished much during his residence in Cassel 

 and in Marburg: the carbon-zinc battery, the investigation of the 

 cacodyl compounds, which paved the way for all subsequent work on 

 the organp-metallic series, and though there he had laid the foundation 

 for his gasometric methods, in his work on the gases of the blast 

 furnace carried out in conjunction with Lord Playfair, and for his 

 chemico-geological researches in Iceland, yet it was in the years 

 following the building of the new Heidelberg laboratory in 1855, that 

 Bunsen's greatest work was done. During the early years of that 

 period the experimental results of his own labours and of those of the 

 pupils who nocked from all parts to work under him, have never been 

 surpassed if ever equalled in quality as well as in quantity by those 

 issuing from any other cheniical laboratory. And here it may be 

 noticed that it is given to but few teachers to reckon as he could 

 amongst the pupils of those years so many men whose names have 

 since become well known. To mention only some, Germany and 

 Switzerland sent Landolt, Lothar Meyer, Pebal, Baeyer, Carius, Pauli, 

 Hermann, Quincke, and Lieben ; from Russia came Beilstein and Schis- 

 koff; from England Atkinson, Matthiessen, Roscoe, and Russell; 

 whilst America, France, Portugal, Sweden, and other countries were 

 also well represented. 



Of the more important work done during those years must first be 

 mentioned his gasometric researches. These included, amongst other 

 matters, exact and original methods for the measurement of gaseous 

 volumes, for the investigation of gaseous diffusion and gaseous absorp- 

 tion, and these he fully described in the only book he ever published. 

 For he was not a compiler, nor was he fond of manuals, and often 

 remarked, laughingly, that what was written down in treatises was 

 usually wrong. Then came the invention of the Bunsen burner, about 

 which an interesting tale could be told. Coal gas had been introduced 

 into Heidelberg just before the new laboratory was built, and Bunsen 



