ay 8, 1873] 
Moving in a Circle 
* I Ap to cross a very large flat field in Lincolnshire one even- 
ing ; the ground covered with saow, and there being a dense 
fog. I knew my way perfectly; but on coming to the hedge 
found that I had deviated fo the right, Next day I had 
occasion to re-visit my track and fouad that I had described 
about one quarter of a ciccle. ; T. M. W 
FUSTUS LIEBIG 
USTUS LIEBIG was born at Darmstadt, the native 
place of many eminent chemists, May 13, 1803 ; died 
at Munich, April 18, 1873. 
_ As generations pass away, and the deeds and capacitiés 
of great men come to be truly estimated, it will be found 
that the name of Liebig claims a position very cluse to 
those of Lavoisier and Dalton, the greatest leaders in our 
science. It is not as the author of the 317 investigations 
the titles of which fill the pages of the Royal Society 
catalogue, nor even as the father of organic chemistry, nor 
as the great originator of a scientific physiology and agri- 
culture, nor again as the writer of numerous handbooks, 
that Liebig has done most for science ; his greatest in- 
fluence has been a personal one, for it is to him that 
most chemists now living either directly or indirectly 
owe their scientific existence. The Giessen Laboratory 
was the first one in which our science was truly taught, 
and from this centre the flame of original research was 
carried throughout all lands by ardent disciples who more 
or less successfully continueji, both as regards tuition 
and investigation, their master’s work. 
Liebig early showed his love for experimental inquiry, 
and his father apprenticed him—as was then usual in the 
case of boys who exhibit such tastes—to an apothecary. 
Ten months of the shop drudgery was sufficient to con- 
vince the boy that this sort of life was not what he 
required, and it is said that he ran away from his pill- 
making ; at any rate, he returned to his home in Darm- 
stadt, and soon entered the University of Bonn, and 
afterwards that of Erlangen, where he met with congenial 
Spirits, and continued his scientific education, At that 
time (1822), however, the German universities were al- 
most destitute of means of stimulating research, or even 
of imparting a knowledge of existing science in its higher 
and more modern forms ; and for this reason the steps of 
all young German chemists were naturally turned towards 
Paris, where Gay Lussac, Thenard, Dulong, and other 
well-known masters were working and teaching. In 1822, 
being nineteen years of age, Liebig had already made 
himself known in his native town and to its paternal 
government by the investigation of the action of alkalies 
on fulminating silver, as well as by other publications on 
the composition of certain colouring materials ; and the 
Grand Duke, anxious to promote the glory of his capital, 
gave his promising young townsman the means of study- 
ing in Paris. There Liebig, thanks to the friendly intro- 
duction of Alexander von Humboldt, was allowed to work 
in Gay Lussac’s private laboratory, where he completed 
his investigation on fulminic acid, and became acquainted 
with Gay Lussac’s methods of exact investigation. In 
Paris, too, he met Mitscherlich and Gustav Rose, and the 
intercourse with them and other men of science which he 
there enjoyed confirmed him in the choice of his profes- 
sion, and in 1824 he returned home and was appointed, 
when twenty-one years of age, Extraordinary, and two 
years afterwards the Ordinary Professor of Chemistry at 
Giessen, the University of his country, and the scene of 
the great labours and triumphs of his life. 
The influence which Liebig has exerted on the progress 
of discovery in our science is due to his possession of 
that peculiar gift essential to all great investigators of 
nature, which unites to indomitable perseverance in fol- 
NATURE 
o 27 
lowing out experimental details, the higher power of 
generalisation. His indefatigable energy in experimental 
investigation must be known to all who have even turned 
over the pages of his Annalen ; there is scarcely a volume 
ia the thirty years dating from the commencement of the 
journal in 1832 to 1862, which does not contain some im- 
portant record of his labours, and in the height of his 
power the number of independent researches which he 
was able to carry out at once is certainly marvellous. 
A mere list of even the most important of his investi- 
gations in the one branch of organic chemistry would 
be far too long for a brief notice such as this; it may, 
however, be well to call to mind his productivity during 
the first few years of the Giessen career. In the first 
rank amongst his earlier researches, and serving as a 
necessary basis for the whole, come those in which he 
placed the analysis of organic substances upon a firm 
and simple basis. His final description of the apparatus 
is worth remembering—“ There is nothing new in this 
arrangement buat its simplicity and perfect reliability.” 
The attack on this subject, commenced in conjunction 
with Gay Lussac in 1823, was not completed by himself 
till 1830; but then he furnished chemists with the simple 
and effectual methods which, with slight modifications, 
we still employ.. Thus armed, the secrets of the com- 
position of the organic acids and alkaloids were soon 
revealed, and among the most important discoveries we 
have first amongst the acids, fulminic (1822), cyanic 
(1827), hippuric (1829), malic, quinic, rocellic and cam- 
phoric (1830), lactic (1832), aspartic (1833), uric (1834), 
then we find chloral and chloroform (1831), acetal (1832), 
aldehyde (1835). 
In 1837 he published, in conjunction with Dumas, 
a paper, “ Note sur la constitution de quelques acides,” 
in which for the first time the theory of polybasic organic 
acids was put forward, Graham’s researches on the phos- 
phates proving the polybasic character of phosphoric acid 
having been published in 1833. Ina research on the consti- 
tution of these bodies published in 1838 this was more fully 
worked out, and Davy’s previously expressed views as to 
the part played by hydrogen confirmed and supported. 
His researches on the cyanogen derivatives (1834), on 
the chlorine substitution-producis of alcohol (1832), and 
those carried on for so many years in conjunction with 
his life-long friend Wohler, as on the composition of sul- 
phovinic acid (1832), and especially that on the deriva- 
tives of benzoic acid (1832) sufficed to place the theory of 
organic radicals on a firm basis. Then too we must not 
forget their conjoint researches, chiefly carried on by cor- 
respondence between Giessen and Gottingen on the oxi- 
acids of cyanozen (1830), a most difficult subject worked 
out in a masterly way, or that on the formation of benzoy! 
hydride from amygdalin in the bitter almond (1837), or 
again the memorable investigations on the nature of uric 
acid and the products of oxidation of this substance by 
nitric acid (1838), in waich not only a large number of 
new bodies are described and allantoin artificially pre- 
pared, but system and order introduced among the whole. 
One of his favourite subjects was that of Fermentation, 
and his explanation of the phenomena as being due to 
the action of a substance whose molecules are in a State 
of motion upon the fermentable body is yet well known, 
though now in the minds of most supplanted by the gefm 
theory of Pasteur. 
As a critic Liebig was sharp, satirical, and sometimes 
éven unsparing and bitter, especially when his own views 
were assailed ; his anonymous critiques are brimfull of 
good-humoured satire, whilst in others to which he gives 
his name, he lashes his victim most unmercifully. Who 
can read his “ Das entrathselte Geheimniss der geistigen 
Gahrung ” “ Vorlaufig briefliche Mittheilung,” 1839, with- 
out amusement? His description of the minute organisms 
having the form of a Beindorfschen Destillirblase (ohne 
den Kiihlapparat) feeding on sugar and excreting alcohol 
