150 SCIENCE. 
JEAN-BAPTISTE-ANDRE DUMAS. 
JEAN-BaptistE-ANDRE Dumas was born at 
Alais, in the south of France, July 14, 1800. 
He was educated at the college of his native 
place, and appears to have been destined by 
his parents for the naval service; but his par- 
ents abandoned their plan, and apprenticed 
him to an apothecary of the town. He. re- 
mained in this situation, however, but a short 
time. In1816 he travelled on foot to Geneva, 
where he found employment in the pharmacy 
of Le Royer. : 
At that time Geneva was the centre of much 
scientific activity ; and young Dumas had the 
opportunity of attending lectures on botany by 
de Candolle, on physics by Pictet, and on 
chemistry by Gaspard de la Rive. 
About this time, young Dumas had the good 
fortune to render an important service to Dr. 
Coindet, to whom it had occurred that burnt 
sponge, then generally used as a remedy for 
goitre, might owe its efficacy to the presence 
of a small amount of iodine. Dumas not only 
proved the presence of iodine in the sponge, 
but also indicated the best method of adminis- 
tering what proved to be almost a specific 
remedy. It was in connection with this investi- 
gation that Dumas’s name first appears in 
public, as the discovery produced a great sen- 
sation. 
Soon after, Dumas formed an intimacy with 
Dr. J. L. Prévost, then recently returned from 
pursuing his studies in Edinburgh and Dublin, 
and was induced to undertake a series of physi- 
ological investigations, which for a time with- 
drew him from his strictly chemical studies. 
Several valuable papers on physiological sub- 
jects were published by Prévost and Dumas, 
which attracted the notice of Alexander von 
Humboldt, who, on visiting Geneva in 1822, 
sought out Dumas, and awakened in him a de- 
sire to seek a wider field of activity. In con- 
sequence he removed to Paris in 1823, where 
the reputation he had so deservedly earned at 
Geneva won for him a cordial reception. 
In 1826 he married Mlle. Herminie Bron- 
gniart, the eldest daughter of Alexandre Bron- 
gniart, the illustrious geologist; and in after 
years his house became one of the chief resorts 
of the scientific society of Paris. 
In 1828-29 Dumas united with Théodore 
Olivier and Eugéne Péclet in founding the 
Ecole centrale des arts et manufactures. In 
1832 Dumas succeeded Gay-Lussac as profes- 
sor at the Sorbonne ; in 1835 he succeeded The- 
nard at the Ecole polytechnique ; and in 1839 
he succeeded Deyeux at the Ecole de médecine. 
4 
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[Vou. IIL, No. 72. 
Thus, before the age of forty, he filled succes- 
sively, and for some time simultaneously, all 
the important professorships of chemistry in 
Paris except that of the College of France, with 
which he was never permanently connected. 
Dumas early recognized the importance of 
laboratory instruction in chemistry, for which 
there were no facilities at Paris when he first 
came there, and in 1832 founded a laboratory 
for research at his own expense. 
The political and social upheaval of 1848 
seemed at the time to endanger the stability 
in France of every thing which a cultivated 
and learned man holds most dear; and Dumas 
was not one to consider his own preferences, 
when he felt he could aid in averting the calam- 
ities which threatened his country. Imme- 
diately after the revolution of February, he 
accepted a seat in the legislative assembly. ° 
Shortly afterwards the president of the re- 
public called him to fill the office of minister 
of agriculture and commerce. During the secs 
ond empire he was elevated to the rank of 
senator, and shortly after his entrance into the 
senate he became vice-president of the high 
council of education. In order to reform the 
abuses into which many of the higher edu- 
cational institutions of Paris had fallen, he 
accepted a place in the municipal council of 
Paris, over which he subsequently presided 
from 1859 to 1870. 
In 1868 Dumas was appointed master of the 
mint of France ; but with the fall of the second 
empire, in 1870, his political career came to an 
abrupt termination. Some years previously 
he had resigned his professorships; and now, 
at the age of seventy, he found himself for 
the first time free to devote his leisure to the 
noble work of encouraging research, and thus 
promoting the advancement of science. He 
had reached an age when active investigation 
was almost an impossibility, but his command- 
ing position gave him the opportunity of exert- 
ing a most powerful influence ; and this he used 
with great effect. In early life he had been 
elected, in 1832, a member of the Academy — 
of sciences; in 1868 he had succeeded Flou- 
rens as its permanent secretary ; and in 1875 he 
was elected a member of the French academy 
as successor to Guizot, —a distinction rarely 
attained by a man of science. It was, how- 
ever, aS permanent secretary of the Academy 
of sciences that Dumas exerted, during the last 
years of his life, his greatest influence. 
When the writer last saw Dumas, in the 
winter of 1881-82, the great chemist had still 
all the vivacity of youth, and it was difficult 
to realize his age. He took a lively interest 
