212 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 607. 



not had the privilege of being a student in 

 his laboratory to realize the tremendous en- 

 thusiasm, energy and resourcefulness with 

 T/hich Baeyer has devoted himself to chem- 

 istry during the past forty-eight years. One 

 of his great ambitions was to found a school 

 of chemists ; that he has succeeded remarkably 

 in this respect is shown by the fact that for 

 yeai-s he has held a position in the chemical 

 world similar to that formerly possessed by 

 Berzelius and by Liebig. In the official ad- 

 dress of the German Chemical Society, pre- 

 sented in connection with the seventieth birth- 

 day festivities, it is admitted that no one since 

 Berzelius and Liebig has exerted such an influ- 

 ence on chemical teaching and research as 

 Baeyer — and yet Baeyer has written no text- 

 book on chemistry, has made no claims as a 

 pedagogue, and has not added to the science a 

 new law or generalization. 



The fact that theories have had so slight an 

 influence on his work — ^possibly because he 

 realized to the fullest extent their inadequacy 

 and temporary character, but especially be- 

 cause he did not need them in order to make 

 scientific discoveries — deserves special em- 

 phasis. He possesses to a remarkable degree 

 the rarest of scientific gifts, namely, the 

 power to ascertain facts accurately regardless 

 of theories — a power which is only to be 

 found in those possessing experimental skill 

 of the highest order. In this respect he is the 

 direct antipode of Kekule, who was especially 

 interested in developing new views and was 

 not interested in substances as such, and who 

 at times gave one the impression of wishing 

 to adjust nature in harmony with his own 

 theories. _In the words of Baeyer, his first 

 student, ' Kekule war der geborne chemische 

 General, er wollte die Natur conunandieren.' 



Baeyer, on the other hand, having no sjTecial 

 views to present or to defend, approached 

 nature from a totally different standpoint; 

 ' meine Versuche habe ich nicht angestellt um 

 zu sehen ob ich recht hatte sondern um zu 

 sehen wie die Korper sich verhalten.' In 

 other words, he let nature or the facts teach 

 him and then adjusted himself accordingly. 

 One who knows Baeyer, either through per- 



sonal contact or by means of a thorough and 

 laborious study of his scientific publications, 

 finds in him a love and respect for truth for 

 its own sake which is both rare and admirable. 

 This characteristic, taken in connection with 

 the unusual experimental power shown in his 

 work, explains the marked influence he has 

 exerted on the development of the chemistry 

 of carbon compounds. It is impossible to 

 give here more than a brief statement of the 

 direction of Baeyer's work which deals entirely 

 with the chemistry of carbon. 



Regardless of what the future may have in 

 store for us concerning the disintegration of 

 matter, it is certain that the chemistry of the 

 element carbon must always remain of para- 

 mount interest because its development is 

 absolutely essential to a fundamental knowl- 

 edge of the chemical processes going on in the 

 vegetable and animal kingdom and must lead 

 ultimately to a scientifically exact biology and 

 medicine. 



Baeyer himself makes nineteen subdivisions 

 in his work from 1857 to 1905; in many cases 

 he was engaged for over a decade on a single 

 subdivision and in most cases he was a pioneer 

 in the field. 



His work on indigo, from 1866-70 and from 

 1877-84, is of general interest because we have 

 here one of the first instances in which a com- 

 plex plant product was made by synthesis in 

 the laboratory. The synthesis was preceded 

 by years of labor which finally resulted in de- 

 termining that the ' architecture ' of the in- 

 digo molecule could be represented by the 

 graphical formula 



o/ 



-°\ 



CH 



"CH O 



< 



NH- 



A 



N/ 



H 



CH 



As the direct outcome of this work, indigo 

 has been manufactured commercially since 

 1891 from anthranilic acid. Similarly an- 

 other complex dyestuil, alizarine, has been 

 made commercially since 1875 from coal-tar 

 products, instead of from the madder root, 

 owing to the work of Graebe and Liebermann 

 in Baeyer's laboratory in 1868. 



