xxxvi Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
Brunswick, to undertake the editorship of the great Dictionary of 
Chemistry , begun by Liebig and Poggendorff in 1837. 
In 1851 he was called to Marburg to succeed Bunsen, who 
had been translated to Breslau. He remained in Marburg till 
1865, when, on the unanimous request of the Faculties of Medicine 
and Philosophy, he was called to succeed Kuhn as professor of 
chemistry in the University of Leipzig. 
In 1870 he added to his professorial work that of the editorship 
of the Journal fiir praktische Chemie. He died very suddenly, 
of heart disease, on the evening of the 25th November 1884. 
This short notice of the principal landmarks in Kolbe’s life has 
been taken from the full and interesting account given by his son-in- 
law, Professor E. v. Meyer, in the Journal fur praktische Chemie. 
Perhaps the most striking feature of Kolbe’s scientific character 
was its independence. His opinions and views were his own, and 
were to an extraordinary degree unalfected by the opinions and 
theories of others. This independence gives a peculiar value to his 
theoretical writings, but it had also its disadvantages. The in- 
dividual character of his style of thinking and writing certainly 
confined his immediate influence very much to those — comparatively 
few — chemists who took the trouble to learn his language and 
understand his methods. The ideas which he originated have now 
been to a great extent translated into the language of modern 
chemistry and form part of the common doctrine, but many 
chemists are unaware of their source, and would scarcely recognise 
them in the form in which they were first published. The loss 
to science was temporary, and Kolbe’s fame may be safely entrusted 
to future historians ; but the misunderstanding, which was a mis- 
understanding on both sides, led sometimes to a kind of strife 
painful to all the friends of those involved in it. 
It is not possible, within the limits of an obituary notice, to do 
more than very briefly indicate the general character of the groups 
of investigations made by Kolbe, and of the theoretical conclusions 
he drew from their results. 
Kolbe’s first great research, published in 1845, was on the com- 
pound formed by the joint-action of chlorine and water on bisul- 
phide of carbon. This substance has the composition CC1 4 S0 2 , 
and its investigation formed the natural sequence to his graduation 
