January 6, 191 6] 



NATURE 



515 



that there is for potassium salts, and the urg-ency 

 of finding- fresh sources of supply, it cannot be 

 doubted that this subject will receive all the atten- 

 tion that its importance deserves. It woiild indeed 

 be fortunate if the needs of the British Empire in 

 this respect could be supplied from our g-reat 

 Indian dependency. H. L. 



PROF. H. DEBUS, F.R.S. 



By the death of Dr. Heinrich Debus, which oc- 

 curred at his residence in Cassel, Hessen, on 

 December 9, we lose almost the last link which 

 connects us with that notable group of men — 

 Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Hooker, Huxley, 

 Tyndall, Williamson, Frankland — who constituted 

 the scientific hierarchy of London in mid-Vic- 

 torian times. To the younger generation of 

 British chemists, Debus was, probably, person- 

 ally almost unknown, but up to within a few 

 years ago he was a constant annual visitor to 

 England, and was to be found at his former haunts 

 in the Athenaeum and Savile Clubs, or at the 

 tables of such of his old friends as were left to 

 him. But as the years passed the ties which led 

 him to revisit the scenes of his social activities 

 became fewer and fewer until there was scarcely 

 a "kent face" left to him in his clubs or in the 

 tea-room of the Royal Society, and London be- 

 came nothing more to him than a place of dead 

 friendships and departed memories, and so he 

 ceased to come. A spare man, sharp-featured and 

 clean-shaven, of abstemious habits, regular and 

 methodical in his mode of life, and of a singularly 

 placid and equable disposition, he maintained his 

 mental and physical vigour up to an advanced age, 

 and was able to take his daily walk almost to the 

 last. His mortal illness was quite short, and he 

 passed away peacefully during the night of 

 December 9, in the ninety-second year of his age. 

 Debus belonged to a school of chemists of which 

 scarcely a representative remains. A reticent 

 man, and particularly uncommunicative concern- 

 ing his personal affairs, very little is known of his 

 origin or early history beyond that he was the son 

 of Valentine Debus, and was born in Hessen in 

 July, 1824. His earliest instructor in chemistry 

 was Bunsen, who succeeded Wohler at the Poly- 

 technic School of Cassel in 1836, and where he 

 remained until 1839, when he was appointed 

 Professor Extraordinarius at Marburg. Debus 

 followed him from Cassel and graduated at Mar- 

 burg in 1848. Here he formed the acquaintance 

 of Kolbe, and gained the friendship of Frank- 

 land, a circumstance which materially affected 

 his subsequent career, as it led to his coming 

 to England, and his eventual selection as 

 Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Naval 

 College, Greenwich. In Frankland's slight auto- 

 biographical sketch, the publication of which we 

 owe to the pious care of his daughters, we read 

 that Debus established a " record " at Marburg, 

 inasmuch as he was the first in that university to 

 hold the "disputation" in German instead of in 

 Latin. What "wrangling" then meant in a Ger- 

 NO. 2410, VOL. 96] 



man university may be gathered from the follow- 

 ing extract from Frankland's journal, under date 

 November 4, 1848, relative to this event : — 



I heard Debus read his discourse and dispute in the 

 University, after which he was fully invested with the 

 title of Ph.D. The Pro- Rector and six professors were 

 present, most of whom, as well as two doctors whom 

 Debus had brought with him, disputed the following 

 theses : — (i) The allotropic condition of matter depends 

 upon differences in the arrangement of atoms ; (2) the 

 ferrocyanide compounds are not to be considered as 

 double salts; (3) the opinion of Ettingshausen as to 

 the cause of electrical phenomena is untenable ; (4) the 

 unequal heating of the air and the earth is the imme- 

 diate cause of the greater part of atmospheric elec- 

 tricity ; (5) the organic bases are coupled ammonia 

 compounds ; (6) the doctrine of polymeric isomorphism 

 is erroneous.^ The ceremony of installation lasted 

 above an hour and a half, and at its close Prof. Bunsen 

 delivered an oration on the volcanic phenomena of 

 Iceland. 



Frankland, it may be noted in passing, estab- 

 lished a further " record " by being the first 

 Englishman to graduate in Marburg; pn this 

 occasion the Faculty dispensed with the dis- 

 putation in the Aula altogether, on the ground, as 

 he says, that being a foreigner, he had not suffi- 

 cient command of the language, either Latin or 

 German. 



Debus 's earliest published scientific work, in 

 1848, was probably inspired by Kolbe, who, after 

 a short sojourn in England, had rejoined Bunsen 

 at Marburg. It consisted of a short paper on the 

 chemistry of madder root, in which the author 

 failed to recognise the nature and mutual relations 

 of alizarin and purpurin ; these he termed, re- 

 spectively, "lizaric acid" and "oxilizaric acid." 

 His next essays were more fortunate, and he pub- 

 lished in rapid succession a number of papers on 

 organic sulphur products, and on the oxidation 

 products of alcohol, glycerin, and glycol. His 

 work on glycerinic acid and its salts, on glyoxal, 

 and glyoxylic acid, finds its due place in the 

 chemical history of these substances. Among 

 subsequent papers the most noteworthy are " On 

 the Chemical Theory of Gunpowder," "On the 

 Nature of W^ackenroder's Solution," and his con- 

 troversy with the late Sir Henry Roscoe on the 

 origin of Dal ton's atomic theory. 



Debus came to this country in 185 1, and, like 

 his friend Frankland, was at first engaged 

 in school-teaching, first at Queenwood College 

 and then at Clifton. In 1870 he moved to 

 London, and was attached to the medical school 

 of Guy's Hospital as lecturer on chemistry. On 

 the establishment of the Royal Naval College at 

 Greenwich he was appointed Professor of 

 Chemistry, presumably through the action of his 

 friend Hirst, who was made Director of Studies. 

 Here he remained until the age of retirement com- 

 pelled him to relinquish the duties of his chair, 

 when he gave up his London residence and again 

 settled in Germany. 



Debus joined the Chemical Society in 1859, and 

 was a vice-president in 187 1-4, but took little 

 share in the management of the society. He was 



^ In the original the titles of the theses are give n in German. 



