1908-9.] Life and Chemical Work of Archibald S. Couper. 193 
XIII. — Life and Chemical Work of Archibald Scott Couper. By 
Richard Anschutz, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry in the 
University of Bonn. Translated and communicated by Emeritus- 
Professor A. Crum Brown, M.D., D.Sc., LL.D. 
(MS. received January 25, 1909.) 
Preface. 
Archibald Scott Couper is one of the most singular appearances in the 
history of the development of Organic Chemistry in the nineteenth century. 
He comes on the scene at the time — the end of the ’fifties — when the valency 
theory began its victorious entrance into our science. 
His two experimental investigations, “ On some Derivatives of Benzene,” 
and “ On Salicylic Acid,” as also his communication on “A New Chemical 
Theory,” were published within the limits of one year, and then with startling 
suddenness his scientific career comes to an end. 
Belonging to none of the then existing chemical schools, and furnished 
with an excellent philosophical training, Couper boldly attacked with sharp 
criticism the theories prevailing in chemistry at the time. 
No claim of priority can be made for his assumption of the concatenation 
of carbon atoms, but, as will be shown in this paper, his statement was quite 
independent of that published somewhat earlier by Kekule. 
Without any doubt, Couper deserves the credit of having introduced into 
constitutional formulae the lines indicating union of atoms, and of having 
thus produced what are now called structural formulae. The results of his 
work on salicylic acid, long doubted by all the chemists who had repeated 
his experiments, were at last shown by the present writer to be accurate. 
In my efforts to help to his historic rights a fellow-chemist as distin- 
guished as he was unfortunate, and to obtain information as to his origin 
and life, I have been assisted by my honoured colleagues Heinrich Debus, 
Greville Williams, Adolf Lieben, Albert Ladenburg, and Alexander Crum 
Brown. Above all, I have to thank the sympathetic zeal with which 
Alexander Crum Brown, at my request, gave himself to the discovery of 
biographical details of his countryman’s life. All of that, which I have 
been able to communicate, as also the translation of this paper into English, 
is his work. 
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