690 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 357. 



Througli the liberality of the daughters and 

 numerous correspondents of Schonbein, Dr. 

 Kahlbaum had the privilege of handling and 

 studying between 1,500 and 1,600 letters, as 

 well as 350 printed papers from the brain and 

 hand of the man he sought to portray. These 

 letters were carefully catalogued and partially 

 indexed to make them readily available. While 

 occupied with his manuscript, he learned that 

 Professor Ed. Schaer, a pupil of Schonbein was 

 also at work on a biography of him, and cor- 

 respondence led them to produce a joint work. 



Such is the origin of these volumes, which 

 contain more than 550 pages. 



The scientific labors of Schonbein comprise 

 his discovery of the passivity of iron, that of 

 ozone, of guncotton and of collodion, besides 

 the many lesser points which in his indefati- 

 gable studies of these bodies he encountered. 

 He discovered the remarkable behavior of iron 

 with nitric acid shortly after he had begun his 

 duties as professor of chemistry and physics at 

 the University of B^sle, in 1835. Dr. Kahl- 

 baum notes that Schonbein' s discovery had 

 been anticipated by James Keir in 1790, but 

 entirely forgotten and neglected. Schonbein's 

 researches on electrical topics were continued 

 many years until 1849, but meanwhile the 

 study of that illusive substance, ozone, discov- 

 ered in embryo in 1839, absorbed much of his 

 energy. The early history of the enormously 

 diflScult problems connected with ozone and the 

 fallacy of ' antozone ' are detailed in a satisfac- 

 tory manner. 



No one of the discoveries made by Schonbein 

 made him more popularly known than that of 

 guncotton, destined to play so important a role 

 in international, as well as industrial, enter- 

 prises ; this dates from 1846. Its value as a 

 substitute for gunpowder was at once perceived, 

 and experiments with firearms were instituted 

 as early as May of the same year. It is a sad 

 commentary on the unprofitableness of pure 

 science from the money point of view that this 

 prime discovery brought to Schonbein only 

 eighteen to twenty thousand dollars, while 

 Alfred Nobel gained through it more than ten 

 million dollars ! 



The discovery of collodion has been claimed 

 for several Americans and Dr. Kahlbaum has 



made a careful study of these claims ; it ap- 

 pears that Dr. Charles T. Jackson discovered 

 the solubility of gun-cotton in January, 1847, 

 and two of his students (Bigelow and Maynard) 

 in February of the same year found the solution 

 useful in surgical cases. The name collodion was 

 given to it by Dr. A. A. Gould in 1848, by which 

 time it was well known to American prac- 

 titioners. The exact date of Schonbein's dis- 

 covery is uncertain, but in February, 1847, De 

 la Rive wrote from Geneva inquiring as to the 

 nature of Schonbein's discovery ' here much 

 discussed.' So it is clear that the invention 

 was made on both sides of the Atlantic almost 

 simultaneously and quite independently. 



After pursuing studies at the Universities of 

 Erlangen and Tiibingen, Schonbein secured in 

 1825 the position of teacher in an institute at 

 Epsom, England, and the two years he spent 

 there had a marked influence on him through 

 life. He attended at that time a lecture by 

 Faraday, but did not seek his acquaintance ; 

 ten years later, having discovered the passive 

 nature of iron in nitric acid, he addressed a 

 letter describing this to Faraday, and this was 

 the beginning of a correspondence and friend- 

 ship lasting twenty-six years and only broken 

 by the death of the Englishman. The * Letters 

 of Faraday and Schonbein ' have been edited 

 by Drs. Kahlbaum and Darbishire, and pub- 

 lished in a handsome volume (London and 

 Basle, 1899). Schonbein's correspondence with 

 Liebig forms Heft V. of these Monographieen. 



Notwithstanding the arduous labors of Schon- 

 bein in his university duties and in the chem- 

 ical laboratory, he found time for conducting a 

 large correspondence with his brother scientists, 

 and also for writing to the secular daily press ; 

 from 1831 to 1832 he was associate editor of the 

 Busier Zeitung on a salary of sixty dollars per 

 annum ; he was a frequent contributor to the 

 columns of Stuttgart newspapers, and to the 

 Schwdbische Mercur from 1833 to 1848. 



The portrait in the first volume shows a 

 heavily built, thick set man, smooth shaven 

 and with full head of hair ; his physiognomy is 

 singularly earnest, without being so charming 

 as that of Bunsen. The volumes contain in- 

 dexes of names of persons and brief tables of 

 contents. Henry Carrington Bolton. 



