6 PREFACE 



The letters which Schonbein left behind cover a period 

 of nearly fifty years. They begin in the year 1820 and 

 extend to his death in 1868. Among their writers are 

 to be found the most illustrious men of the time. The 

 greatest of all is Faraday : there are about seventy letters 

 from him to Schb'nbein, and as many more from Schonbein 

 in reply ; then come Grove, Graham, Sir John Herschel, 

 and a series of other English men of science. Among 

 Germans there is in the first place Wilhelm Eisenlohr of 

 Karlsruhe, the physicist, who furnishes more than a 

 hundred letters ; then Schelling, Schonbein's great teacher, 

 with whom he kept up a steady intercourse until his 

 death ; Liebig with fifty letters, and Pettenkof er with as 

 many more, and Wohler with about thirty ; then Martius, 

 Jolly, Kobell, Steinheil of Munich, Magnus, Mitscherlich, 

 and Poggendorff of Berlin, Erdmann of Leipsic, Muncke 

 of Heidelberg, Hugo Mohl of Tubingen, Dingier of 

 Augsburg, the well-known editor of the Polytechmcal 

 Journal, in whose factory young Schonbein had once 

 worked, and many others, particularly among his Swabian 

 countrymen. To these must be added a series of Swiss 

 scientific men : Auguste de la Rive, Marignac, Brunner, 

 and Agassiz ; while among Frenchmen we have Henri 

 Sainte-Claire-Deville, Dumas, Scoutetten of Metz, etc. 

 Finally there are nine letters extending from 1837 to 

 1847 from Jakob Berzelius. 



The 9th of August of this year [1898] was the fiftieth 

 anniversary of the death of Berzelius, who was exactly 

 twenty years older than Schonbein, and died twenty years 

 before him. This anniversary, as is right, is not to be 

 allowed to pass unnoticed ; it is to be celebrated in Stock- 

 holm on the 9th of October, and I should be glad to be 

 able to assist in the celebration in some slight degree, by 

 laying the following pages as a modest tribute on the tomb 

 of the great master. 



