594 REPORT — 1894. 



Section B.— CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 

 President of the Section — Profeasor Haeold B. Dixon, M.A., F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 9. 

 The President delivered the following- Address : — 



^An Oxford School of Chemists.' 



It has heen said, and no doubt with truth, that few Presidents of Sections start 

 writing an address without referring to that of their predecessor who held office on 

 the last occasion when the Association met in the same city. By such reference 

 each new President gains the advantage of many points of perspective and con- 

 trast ; for in the interval a generation of workers has passed away, and the last 

 new thing of the old meeting is the ancient instance of to-day. In the present 

 case I turned to the Report of 1860 with a lively hope of drawing inspiration from 

 it; for my predecessor at the last Oxford meeting was no less a master of experiment 

 and expression than the late Professor Brodie. Judge of my disappointment when 

 I found that Brodie had written no address at all. Whether that great man, 

 knowing there were better things to do here than listen to addresses, had the 

 courage to make an innovation he thought desirable in itself, or whether, as others 

 say, he was but obeying the etiquette of the Oxford professoriate, the fact remains, 

 the assembled chemists went away unaddressed, and the natural spring of inspira- 

 tion for the address of 1894 is found dry at its source. Of course you will say, 

 * Why do you not follow such a good example ? ' I wish I had the courage. As 

 it is, I can but urge the vacuum of 1860 as some excuse for the emptiness of the 

 address I now present — compelled to do so partly by the force of fashion and the 

 demands of the assistant general secretary, and (shall I add ?) partly by the grati- 

 fication of holding forth, with a little brief authority, in my old academic home, 

 endeared to me personally by so many happy memories, and hallowed in the minds 

 of chemists by the traditions of such great achievements in the science we pursue. 



I say traditions advisedly, for the chemical achievements spoken of were largely 

 forgotten, or put on one side as guesses and half-truths. No chemist here will need 

 reminding that I refer to the first school of scientific chemistry, the school founded 

 two centuries and a half ago by Robert Boyle with his disciples Hooke and Mayow 

 — a group whom I will venture to call ' the Oxford school of chemists.' And now 

 that chemists are met together once more in Oxford it seemed to me not inappro- 

 priate for us to consider what this school of chemists accomplished, and wherein it 

 failed, what led to the sudden growth and what to the decline of chemical investi- 

 gation here, and what lessons for modern Oxford may be read in the history of that 

 rise and fall. 



The intellectual awakening which followed the re-discovery of the ancient 

 world of literature gave rise to the scientific interrogation of nature. In Italy 

 first, and then in France, England, and in Germany, the diffusion of classical 

 learning broke down the ancient barriers of restraint, and developed a spirit of free 



