iv "BUNSENIANA" 95 



Chemical Society m January 1896 by my distinguished 

 and lamented friend Professor FitzGerald of Dublin 

 University. 



Helmholtz and his wife suffered a similar loss to 

 ourselves in the death of their eldest son. Robert von 

 Helmholtz was from birth a cripple, and it was only by 

 the very greatest care and by the most rigid surgical 

 and medical treatment that he survived his childhood. 

 He became, however, a distinguished mathematician ; 

 indeed I have heard his father say that he considered 

 his son's mathematical brain superior to his own, and if 

 his life had been spared he too would have done great 

 things. 



Full of honours and esteemed by the whole world, 

 Helmholtz breathed his last on September 8th, 1894. 

 An excellent likeness of Helmholtz faces this page. 



I first met the eminent Belgian chemist Stas at 

 Heidelberg, where he had come on a visit to Bunsen. 

 I afterwards called upon him several times at his 

 laboratory in Brussels, and also met him in Paris more 

 than once. He was a very small, refined, delicate 

 man. " Ah, mon ami" he used to say, " je suis tres- 

 maladey His experimental work, as all chemists know, 

 was the acme of accuracy, and only those who have 

 endeavoured to follow in his footsteps can form a con- 

 ception of the labour he bestowed upon his atomic 

 weight determinations. It is interesting to remember 

 that whilst Stas's classical researches gave to chemists 

 the proof that Prout's law does not hold good, his 

 earlier work with Dumas was undertaken with the view 

 of ascertaining its truth. He was far from being a rich 

 man, and was held in high esteem in his own country 

 as well as by chemists all the world over. When I 

 visited him in Brussels he resided in a small house 



