BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
81 
missed “the dear presence of former companions and also 
the warm summer sun.” She had a rather unique experience 
at the chemical laboratory presided over by the famous 
chemist, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. She had no letter to him, 
but relying on her previous fortune, she drove to his residence, 
adjoining his laboratory, and sent up her visiting-card. 
“After a -wait, I was asked upstairs by Bunsen himself to 
his private room. I explained that I hoped to see his labora¬ 
tory, and I was politely refused. He said that there was a 
law against admitting women to the university. I explained 
I had not come to study, but to visit. To this he replied that 
the laboratory rooms were now filled with young men, but 
if I would wait until Sunday — seven days — I could have the 
privilege of going through — probably. I explained that I 
was leaving Heidelberg that day. This seemed in no way to 
shake him, and so I departed, wondering what kind of young 
men were in his rooms, different from those I had already 
seen elsewhere in German laboratories.” 
From Cologne, where she renewed her earlier impression 
of what she calls the “monarch of cathedrals,” with its mind- 
satisfying interior, she went to Bonn, where she was fortunate 
enough to find all the prominent chemists. Of Professor Fried¬ 
rich August Kekule, who had done so much to develop the theory 
of carbon-compounds, she says: “He is a very charming¬ 
looking person, gray-haired and bearded. He asked me why 
in the world I wanted to study chemistry, why I did not do 
something else! This was a very difficult question to answer. 
He had had a very poor experience with his lady-students. 
Two Russian ladies had applied and been admitted into his 
private laboratory. One killed herself, by taking poison in¬ 
tentionally in his laboratory. The other lady was always mak¬ 
ing combustions and reading romances, so as Kekule said, 
he never got results. I may say here that generally, in Ger¬ 
many, the right to admit ladies into the professor’s labora¬ 
tory rests with him. It is his castle, no one has the right to in¬ 
quire what he does there, and if the professor so pleases, he 
can admit the woman-student.” 
She had a letter of introduction to Professor Rein, who pre- 
