September 19, 1901] 



NATURE 



505 



seat beside enthusiasm for evening classes and faith in the 

 efficacy of that mysterious panacea " technical instruction." It 

 is indeed lamentable to think of the valuable years of productive 

 work lost to the country through so much of the energy of these 

 early professors having been sacrificed to these veritable fetishes 

 of our would-be educational reformers. 



Notwithstanding the unfavourable conditions under which 

 most of these university colleges had in the first instance to carry 

 on work, it was not long before they show'ed that they were to 

 become, even during the tenure of office of their first professors, 

 important centres for the prosecution of research — at least as far 

 as chemical science was concerned. Owens College had indeed 

 already led the way in this matter before the period with which 

 I am more especially concerned to-day, for there the first pro- 

 fessor of chemistry had pursued his memorable investigations on 

 the organo-metallic compounds, and had, within the first five 

 years after the foundation of the College, enunciated that 

 generalisation which was subsequently extended into the 

 law of valency ; whilst under his successors. Sir Henry Roscoe, 

 Schorlemmer, Harold Dixon, and Perkin, jun., the Owens 

 College has become perhaps the largest and best equipped school 

 of scientific chemistry in the British Islands. 



From the Yorkshire College, Leeds, opened in 1875, there 

 proceeded immediately in rapid succession that whole series of 

 careful investigations relating more especially to specific volume 

 and other physical constants which we associate with its first 

 chemical professor, Thorpe, and his coadjutors. 



In the west of England, where the University College of 

 Bristol was opened in 1S76, the chair of chemistry was first 

 occupied by the man who has so recently once more proved to 

 the world that there are discoveries made in these islands which 

 for striking originality and independence are unsurpassed and 

 hardly equalled elsewhere. It was during his tenure of the 

 chair at Bristol that Ramsay, assisted by his able fellow-worker 

 and successor Sidney Young, carried out those important and 

 most laborious investigations on vapour pressure and the thermal 

 properties of liquids which not only displayed his extraordinary 

 fertility and resource as an experimenter, but also revealed that 

 exceptional freshness of mind which has enabled him to discern 

 new methods of attacking problems that have already engaged 

 the attention of many able men before him. 



Turning from the west of England to the Midlands, where, 

 in 18S0, there was founded, through the private munificence of 

 the late Sir Josiah Mason, a college bearing his name, which, 

 before even attaining its majority, was transformed at the 

 psychological moment, as by the wand of the magician, into the 

 University of Birmingham. The first professor of chemistry at 

 the Mason College, my distinguished predecessor, Tilden, soon 

 made opportunity there to continue those early researches on 

 the terpenes with which his name will always be associated. We 

 find him also further elaborating the important uses as a re- 

 agent of nitrosyl chloride, which he had a number of years pre- 

 viously shown how to prepare in a state of purity, and which 

 has played a somewhat similar part in the exploration of the 

 terpene hydrocarbons that phenylhydrazine has done in the 

 elucidation of the sugar-group. In addition to these investiga- 

 tions we find Tilden at Birmingham also turning his attention 

 to some of the phenomena attending the solution of salts. The 

 younger men attached to the Mason College also found there 

 the opportunity of enriching chemical science with the results of 

 notable investigations ; for do we not all remember Thomas 

 Turner's valuable contributions to our knowledge of the 

 influence of chemical composition on the physical and mechani- 

 cal properties of cast iron? Whilst early amongst those 

 detailed investigations on the phenomena of solution, which in 

 recent years have had such far-reaching effects on the 

 development of our science, must be mentioned Dr. Nicol's 

 experiments on the volume changes attending the mixture of 

 salt solutions, and on the molecular volume, the boiling point, 

 and expansion of such solutions. 



In the bleak north-east of our island, at Dundee, where a 

 college was founded in 1S82 with an extremely handsome en- 

 dowment by members of the Baxter family, the first professor 

 of chemistry, Carnelley, fired by that restless and almost per- 

 fervid energy which doubtless hastened his untimely end, soon 

 found opportunity to interrogate Nature in various direc- 

 tions, notwithstanding the arduous teaching duties which his 

 insatiable love of work had imposed upon himself Thus, 

 already in 1884, we find him, in his quest for material which 

 should throw fight on the periodic relationship of the elements. 



NO. 1664, VOL. 64] 



continuing his laborious work on melting points and publishing 

 those two ponderous quarto volumes in which every known 

 melting point was recorded, and forming truly one of the most 

 remarkable compilations ever attempted in our science. Of 

 these volumes he might indeed have said, " Exegi monumentum 

 jere perennius," for they will assuredly prove a record of the 

 boundless energy which characterised the man, more imperish- 

 able even than the memorial tablet erected by his admiring 

 students and friends in the entrance hall of the Dundee labora- 

 tory, which he built and loved so well. 



Yet another chemist, whose untimely death we have had to 

 lament during the past twenty years, laboured with marked zeal 

 in one of these new colleges, for it was at Aberystwyth that 

 Humpidge, regardless of his delicate health and in spite of the 

 altogether unreasonable burden of teaching duties imposed upon 

 him by the terms of his appointment, contributed to our know- 

 ledge of the atomic weight of beryllium, and participated in 

 establishing the position occupied by that metal in the natural 

 classification of the elements. 



Time does not permit me to further dilate upon the great 

 activity displayed by many of the first occupants of the chairs of 

 chemistry in these provincial University Colleges. It is also 

 unnecessary for me to do more than remind you of the work 

 accomplished by the two Colleges of the City and Guilds of 

 London, the chemical laboratories of which have from their 

 very inception been under the stimulating influences of Dr. 

 Armstrong and Prof Meldola, foci of research from which a 

 number of young chemists of distinction have already emanated. 



In recent years we have witnessed the genesis of another 

 class of institution, less ambitious in their aspirations than the 

 University Colleges, but indirectly also of much importance in 

 their bearing upon the nurture of scientific chemistry in ihis 

 country. I refer to the so-called Polytechnics which have sprung 

 up in several parts of the metropolis, and to some other insti- 

 tutions of similar scope in different parts of the country. If 

 research in the University Colleges has been the product of 

 their professors rather than of the environment which they 

 afford, assuredly this is even far more so in the case of these 

 Polytechnics, which are primarily evening schools for the benefit 

 of those who have other occupations during the day. That the 

 young lecturers on chemistry at these places should find time 

 and opportunity for original research, and that sometimes of a 

 very high order, is indeed a brilliant testimonial to their in- 

 domitable energy and resourcefulness. Overburdened with 

 large classes until late hours at night, often in those remote and 

 hideous parts of London which suggest to most of us only Slum- 

 land and the philanthropic efforts of Toynbee Hall or of Dr. 

 Barnardo, these young chemists awake in the morning only to 

 return as rapidly as possible to those laboratories which exercise 

 on them a fascination as subtle and magnetic as that which 

 draws the commonplace Englishman to the golf-links, the 

 cricket field, or the racecourse. It was in the laboratory of 

 such a technical school, the Heriot Watt College, at Edinburgh, 

 that my distinguished predecessor in this chair, my friend Prof. 

 Perkin, created his opportunities for devising and carrying 

 out those now classical methods of building up carbon rings 

 which are the admiration of all organic chemists throughout the 

 world ; methods which he has recently brought to such a pitch 

 of perfection that he is not only able to forge these rings in great 

 variety, but to "bridge" them with links of carbon atoms. It 

 was at the Heriot Watt College also that his work on berberin 

 was performed, and it was here that he contracted that fertile 

 alliance with Dr. Kipping, his able coadjutor in so many valu- 

 able investigations. 



At the London Polytechnics, again, more recently, we have 

 had similar examples of fertility, for are we not all familiar with 

 the masterly work of Mr. W. J. Pope, who by his investigations 

 at the Goldsmiths" Institute has extended our knowledge of 

 asymmetric atoms, and has shown that optical activity, which 

 hitherto had only been associated with carbon, and somewhat 

 doubtfully with nitrogen, can certainly be produced, not only 

 by asymmetric pentad nitrogen, but also by tetravalent tin and 

 sulphur? Dr. Hewitt, again, whom I am proud to number 

 among my former students, has shown that the laboratory of 

 the People's Palace, Whitechapel, may be made a centre in 

 which abstruse investigations on the aromatic compounds can 

 be carried on. 



There is, however, perhaps nothing which testifies morestrongly 

 to the zeal for original investigation amongst British chemists than 

 the manner in which some of the science masters at our schools 



