NA TURE 



49 



BERZELIUS AND WdHLER. 

 Briefwechsel zwischen J. Berzelius und F. Wohler. 

 Im Auftrage der Konigl. Gesellschaft der Wissen- 

 schaften zu Gottingen. Mit einem Commentar von J. 

 von Braun. Herausgegeben von O. Wallach. Two 

 vols. Pp. xxii + 717 and pp. 743. (Leipzig : Wilhelm 

 Engelmann, 1901.) Price 2/. net. 



THE story of the origin of Wohler's association with 

 erzelius has been told by Wohler himself in the 

 Berichte of the German Chemical Society in one of the 

 most charming autobiographical sketches which have 

 ever enlivened the formal pages of a scientific periodical. 

 Readers of the Berichte — and their number is legion — 

 will recall the picture of the young graduate of twenty- 

 three who, with the ardour of the zealous neophyte, had 

 journeyed from the cloisters at Heidelberg to seek light 

 and leading from the great high priest at Stockholm. 

 How with a beating heart he stood before Berzelius's 

 door and rang the bell. How it was opened by a well- 

 clad, portly, vigorous-looking man — none other than 

 Berzelius himself ; and how he was led into the laboratory 

 as in a dream, doubting if he was really in the classical 

 place which was the object of his aspirations. 



From that memorable meeting sprang a friendship 

 which ended only with Wohler's death. Berzelius died 

 in 1848, but to the end -of his days Wohler continued to 

 cherish the most affectionate feeling towards his teacher, 

 exhibiting an almost filial piety in regard to his name and 

 fame. He remained to the last what he was wont to sign 

 himself—" Unveranderlich Ihr Wohler." 



Berzelius was an indefatigable letter-writer, and his 

 correspondents were to be found in every country in 

 which chemistry was cultivated. But to none did he 

 unburden himself as he did to Wohler. For nearly a 

 quarter of a century — that is from 1824 to 184S — scarcely 

 a month passed without an exchange of letters. Those 

 from Berzelius were carefully preserved by Wohler, who 

 subsequently presented them, some hundreds in number, 

 to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. 



It is this correspondence which forms the subject- 

 matter of the volumes before us. Its publication is due 

 to the action of the Royal Society of Sciences of Gottingen, 

 which has desired thereby to commemorate, in connection 

 with the centenary of his birth, the long and valuable 

 service which Wohler rendered to that body as its 

 secretary. Wohler had stipulated that the letters from 

 Berzelius which he deposited with the Swedish Academy 

 should not be published before January 1, 1900. This 

 injunction was, no doubt, expedient in view of the 

 character of the letters. The period over which the 

 correspondence extended was a time of stress and strain, 

 not only in politics, but also in science and especially in 

 the science of chemistry. When it began, the influence 

 of Berzelius in the world of chemistry was supreme. 

 Davy, it is true, still lived, but his intellectual activity 

 was well-nigh spent and he was already showing signs of 

 the obscure malady which occasioned his death in 1829. 

 As the years flowed on, Berzelius was made conscious 

 that his influence was waning — steadily undermined by 

 NO. 1725, VOL. 67] 



the leaders of chemical thought in Germany and in 

 France, by Liebig and Dumas and their respective 

 followers, who, continually at war with one another, 

 agreed only in disagreeing with Berzelius. 



The secretary of the Swedish Academy was, how- 

 ever, a doughty antagonist ; very tenacious of his 

 convictions and somewhat insistent in his expression 

 of them, as the pages of his Jahresberichte frequently 

 testify. As might be expected, his letters to Wohler 

 give even more emphatic expression of his opinions, 

 and when his feud with Liebeg culminated in an 

 open breach, he is at no pains to conceal his sense of 

 resentment and irritation. It is this circumstance that 

 determined Wohler to fix the end of the century as the 

 time that the letters should first be made public — -a 

 time so remote from the period to which they relate 

 as to render it reasonably certain that no pain would be 

 occasioned by their publication. In this respect Wohler 

 was true to himself. He hated contention and was 

 always ready to advise the lion to eat sugar, as he once 

 said to Liebig. His own letters abundantly illustrate this 

 disposition. They are delightful in their spontaneity and 

 directness, in their sobriety of statement, their unfailing 

 charity and the quiet, delicate humour by which they are 

 constantly illumined. Berzelius evidently set considerable 

 store by them, and they were preserved with no less care 

 than his own. They were ultimately given by the Baroness 

 Berzelius to the Stockholm Academy, and were by it 

 placed at the disposal of the Gottingen Society. With a 

 few exceptions, Berzelius's letters were written in Swedish, 

 and have been rendered into German for the purpose of 

 this work by Frau Prof. Schering, of Gottingen, the 

 daughter of the Swedish Prof. Malmsten. Those from 

 Wohler have been arranged for publication by his 

 daughter, Frl. Emilie Wohler. 



To the historian of chemistry, this correspondence is 

 of singular value and interest, inasmuch as it stretches 

 over the period which saw the rise of modern chemical 

 theory. Throughout it are constant references to 

 the ideas and hypotheses which gradually developed 

 into the chemical doctrine of the middle part of the 

 nineteenth century — of the period we associate with the 

 names of Liebig and Wohler, Magnus, Mitscherlich, Rose 

 and Dumas. In some of the letters, we have accounts 

 of discoveries and inventions which mark epochs, or 

 points of departure, in chemical progress. Thus in one 

 of the letters Wohler describes in detail Liebig's newly- 

 invented method of organic analysis, with sketches of 

 the potash-bulbs, of the mode of making the india-rubber 

 joints and of the charcoal furnace or chauffer. Berzelius 

 was, as is evident from his reply, greatly impressed 

 with the value and importance of the new method, and his 

 genius for manipulative chemistry was immediately exer- 

 cised in suggestions which he trusts may be improvements. 

 Wohler also sent to Stockholm one of the earliest 

 accounts of Will and Varrentrapp's method of deter- 

 mining nitrogen. Indeed, we frequently meet with 

 accounts, occasionally illustrated by rough sketches, of 

 manipulative methods and pieces of apparatus which 

 are nowadays to be met with in all laboratories. We have 

 accounts sometimes from the discoverers themselves of 

 metaphosphoric acid, thoria, hippuric acid, vanadium, 

 tellurium, chloroform, chloral ; of the isolation of 



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