5o6 



NATURE 



[September 19, 1901 



have participated in the advancement of chemical knowledge. 

 Some of these schools have, indeed, from time to time secured 

 the services of men whose names are indelibly engraved on the 

 records of scientific chemistry, and it is from the laboratories of 

 these schools that in some cases perhaps their best work has 

 emanated. Of the chemical investigators who have laboured in 

 school laboratories there occur to me, amongst the living, 

 Debus and Clowes at iTueenwood, Tilden and Shenstone at 

 Clifton, Purdie at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brereton Baker at 

 Dulwich, Charles Baker at Shrewsbury. To these names might 

 be added many more ; indeed an examination of the list of 

 Fellows of the Chemical Society shows at what a number of 

 schools throughout the country the chemical teaching is now 

 imparted by men who have themselves advanced the science 

 which they profess. 



From the conspicuous instances which I have brought before 

 you — and they might, did time allow, be greatly multiplied— it 

 must be obvious that if a chemist only possesses the necessary 

 enthusiasm and qualifications he will, no matter how inauspicious 

 his surroundings, succeed in doing something to extend the 

 boundaries of his science, and I think I may go further and say 

 without fear of contradiction that in this devotion to research 

 the chemist in this country usually throws into the shade the 

 representatives of other branches of science. How is this pre- 

 eminent zeal of the British chemist to be explained ? I believe 

 that there are two principal causes in operation which have 

 brought about this result. Firstly, the great majority of the 

 higher chemical teachers in this country have been trained in 

 Germany, or have been trained by men who were themselves 

 trained there ; and secondly, they have only in exceptional 

 cases been educated at the ancient seats of learning. Their 

 inspiration and enthusiasm are almost invariably directly or in- 

 directly traceable to a German origin, and this fire is kept alive 

 by their remaining in constant touch with German chemical 

 literature. 



It is being continually impressed upon us in the newspapers 

 and dinned into our ears from every platform that it is imperative 

 for this country to approximate more to German ideas and 

 methods, and in general to cast away our insular prejudices, 

 obstinacy, and self-satisfaction. We chemists have already done 

 these things ; we have emancipated ourselves from the mis- 

 chievous illusions which have a tendency to thrive in a country 

 enjoying an isolated geographical position. For, during the 

 last half century the academic springs of Germany have been 

 visited by a stream of young English chemists, a stream which, 

 for the perennial regularity of its flow, reminds one indeed of 

 the pilgrimage made by our fashionable invalids to the same 

 country in the hope of correcting the effects of high living by the 

 waters of Homburg, Kissingen, and Wiesbaden. There must 

 indeed be few chemists who return from the German temples of 

 science without bringing back at least a spark of the sacred fire 

 to be kindled on an altar at home ; and although at times it may 

 be stifled by the island fog, or burn low through the scarcity of 

 fuel, it generally smoulders long before going out altogether. 



The chemist, again, is generally, as I have said, unlettered by 

 an English university record : he stands or falls by the work of 

 his life, and not, as so many others do, by the reputation which 

 they have made in three short years of adolescence at one of the 

 ancient seats of learning. 



The spirit of research, which was formerly but a sporadic 

 manifestation within the walls of these venerable institutions, 

 has, however, now become endemic there also, and for a number 

 of years past chemical literature has received a continuous stream 

 o f original communications from Oxford and Cambridge, .as well 

 as from the Universities of Scotland and Ireland. Instead of 

 those occasional contributions which were customary in the past, 

 we have now evidence that these centres in several cases 

 yield to none in the energy and success with which chemical 

 investigation is being pursued, and that the work of the chemical 

 staff is being shared in by advanced pupils trained at these 

 universities themselves. In this connection it is quite un- 

 necessary for me to remind you of the contributions to British 

 Chemistry within recent years by Crum Brown and his pupils at 

 Edinburgh, by Japp at Aberdeen, by Purdie and James Walker 

 at the duplex university now working so harmoniou.sly north 

 and south of the Tay, by Emerson Reynolds at Dublin, and by 

 Harcourt and Harold Dixon, Liveing and Dewar, Ruhemann, 

 Heycock and Neville, Fenton, Sell, Marsh and others, who 

 have brought our science into such living prominence on the 

 banks of the Cam and the Isis. 



NO. 1664, VOL. 64] 



It is, however, not at home only that British chemists have 

 displayed their devotion to research, for with the world-wide 

 relations of the empire it has natur.ally fallen to the lot of some 

 of our number to carry the science to the uttermost parts of the 

 earth, but it is surely a matter of which we may be justly proud 

 that some of these missionaries, like Mallett, Liversidge, Pedler 

 and Rennie, have in these distant lands carried out a number of 

 most important scientific investigations ; whilst to one of them. 

 Dr. Divers, belongs the great distinction, not only of having 

 carried chemistry to the Far East, but of having reared a most 

 active school of chemical research in that fascinating island 

 empire of the rising sun and the chrysanthemum which has won 

 the unfeigned admiration of the West. 



The annals of British Chemistry are, however, by no means 

 an exclusive record of the exploits of those engaged in the 

 teaching of our science. I have already referred to the import- 

 ance of the contributions made by men of leisure, but an equally 

 noteworthy feature of British Chemistry is that its progress has 

 been so often furthered by men who have snatched the time for 

 investigation out of a busy professional or industrial life. Be- 

 longing to this category the names of a long line of distinguished 

 chemists of our own time suggest themselves : Warren de la 

 Rue, Hugo Midler, .Sir John Lawes, Sir William Crookes, Sir 

 William Abney, Peter Griess, Newlands, O'SuUivan, Horace' 

 and .\drian Brown, Harris Morris, Cross, and Bevan. To this 

 group of chemists belongs also Dr. Ludwig Mond, whose tech- 

 nical researches have been of such great value to industrial 

 chemistry, whilst his devotion to the pure science is attested by 

 his interesting discovery and investigation of the metallic car- 

 bonyl compounds, and by his conception and munificent endow- 

 ment of the Davy-Faraday Laboratory, in which such unique 

 opportunities for research have been provided by him. 



This would appear to be the most fitting moment also to refer 

 to certain other institutions intended for purposes of research 

 which have been est.ablished during the past twenty-five years. 

 Of these the first is the Rothamsted Laboratory, so celebrated 

 during the last half-century for the memorable investigations of 

 Lawes, Gilbert, Pugh, and Warington, but which has more re- 

 cently, through the generosity of the late Sir John Lawes, been 

 rendered a permanent home for the elucidation of agricultural 

 problems both by laboratory experiments and by trials in the 

 field. Secondly, there is the Research Laboratory which the 

 Pharmaceutical Society has established with the view of raising 

 to a higher level the chemical education of its most promising 

 future members. This laboratory has furnished the opportunity 

 for the valuable investigations of its first director. Prof Dun- 

 stan, and of his successor. Dr. Collie. Still more recently a 

 chemical research laboratory has been established in the Im- 

 perial Institute. That noble building has within the last few 

 years undergone a process of transverse subdivision, one-half 

 having assumed an independent existence as the nucleus of that 

 still crystallising body, the University of London ; whilst in the 

 remaining half the work of the Institute is now carried on in 

 such silence that we have almost forgotten its existence. For 

 where is the florid music with which on summer nights the air 

 of South Kensington was wont to reverberate? Gone. Gone 

 also are the tea-tables, the gardens with their million fairy 

 lights, and the promenading crowds in gay attire. But if the 

 Institute, founded by public subscription to watch over and 

 advance the prosperity of the British dominions, has been im- 

 poverished by the discontinuance of these revels, it has become 

 enriched and has gained in dignity by the creation within its 

 walls of a Research Laboratory in which Prof. Dunstan and his 

 assistants are busily investigating the chemical nature of 

 numerous interesting products obtained from all parts of Greater 

 Brit.ain. 



There can, in my opinion, be no doubt that this much ex- 

 tended cultivation of scientific chemistry in this country, which 

 is such a noticeable feature of the concluding years of the nine- 

 teenth century, has been greatly assisted by a most fortunate, 

 and more or less accidental, circumstance, without which the 

 energy and enthusiasm of our chemical teachers would have been 

 seriously restricted in their influence. I refer to the very sub- 

 stiintial surplus, producing an income of 6000/. to 7000/. a year, 

 of which the Commissioners of the 1851 Exhibition found them- 

 selves possessed, and its utilisation on the advice of the late 

 Lord Playfair for the purpose of the Research Scholarships 

 which have for some ten years past been so highly prized by all 

 the educational institutions permitted to participate in them. 

 The good wrought by these scholarships has been very far- 



