48 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



to Ramsay's importunity. The result was a very substantial 

 addition to our knowledge of the pyridine bases and their deriva- 

 tives. The original papers were published in the Phil. Mag. 

 {Oct. 1876, Oct. 1877 and July 1878) and summarised in J. 

 Chem. Soc. xxxv. 1879. While he was still engaged in this work, 

 in which I occasionally assisted him, I completed my honours 

 exam, and B.Sc. degree and won a scholarship which enabled 

 me to remain at the University and gave me a certain status as 

 Lecturer in Mineralogy. As my duties in this capacity, however, 

 only occupied a part of my time, it was arranged between us in 

 the autumn of 1876 that we should start an investigation of the 

 quinine alkaloids. The method we adopted breaking down by 

 oxidation with permanganate which has since been very exten- 

 sively employed, led at once to important results. We obtained 

 pyridine carboxylic acids from quinine, cinchonine, quinidine, 

 and cinchonidine, and thus for the first time succeeded in estab- 

 lishing a connection between these alkaloids and the pyridine 

 bases. 



We had no idea when we commenced our work that any such 

 a relation existed and, had it not been for the lucky chance that 

 we were familiar through Eamsay's work on picoline with the 

 peculiar smell of pyridine, the true nature of the acids we pre- 

 pared would probably have remained long undetected. Our 

 first paper was published in 1878 the work having been inter- 

 rupted for a time by my absence during the summer of 1877 in 

 Leipzig and this was followed by a fuller paper in 1879. 

 Attempts were afterwards made to ignore our work and to 

 assign the discovery to Skraup, but an examination of the dates 

 of the published papers puts it beyond all doubt that ours was 

 the first published work on the subject. 



Not long after we started the investigation, Ramsay's interests 

 received an entirely new direction, and I was left to carry on the 

 work alone, with only occasional help and advice from him. So 

 far as I know he never again engaged in organic research. 



