xl Animal Report of the Council. 



By the death of Victor Meyer, ihe Society loses one of its 

 most distinguished honorary members, and science one of its 

 greatest teachers and discoverers. He died young — he was not 

 quite forty-nine — and it might have been hoped that there were 

 many years of work still before him, but his health broke down, 

 and, worn out with pain and insomnia, he committed suicide 

 on August 8, 1897. 



Victor Meyer began his chemical studies under Bunsen, at 

 Heidelberg, and continued them under Baeyer, at Berlin. He 

 held appointments successively at Stuttgart, Zurich, Gottingen, 

 and finally, at Heidelberg, where he succeeded to the chair of 

 Chemistry on the retirement of Bunsen. 



It is impossible here to give details of his investigations, 

 which began about 1870, and were continued till his death ; it 

 must suffice to mention some of the most important. He dis- 

 covered nitro-ethane and its homologues, and by acting on these 

 bodies with nitrous acid, he obtained nitrolic acid and pseudo- 

 nitrols. Ten years later he found that iso-nitroso compounds 

 are formed by the action of hydroxylamine on aldehydes and 

 ketones, and that this reaction is of general application. 



In 1882, Meyer discovered in ordinary benzene a new con- 

 stituent, to which he gave the name thiophene ; and, in 1888, 

 he was able to publish, under the title of " Die Thiophen-gruppe," 

 a very complete account, not only of this interesting body, but 

 of many of its derivatives. Mention must also be made of his 

 discovery of the oximes and of the group of bodies obtained 

 from the hypothetical iodonium hydroxide. 



Lastly, but certainly not least in importance, is Victor Meyer's 

 work on vapour density, and the simple methods he devised for 

 making that important determination. The earlier methods 

 were direct — a certain volume of the vapour was obtained and 

 its weight ascertained, or a definite weight of a substance was 

 vaporised, and the volume occupied by the vapour ascertained — 

 but they were liable to error, and difficult to execute. It was 

 reserved for Victor Meyer to show how much easier it was to 

 make the method indirect — to volatilize a definite weight of the 



