Am.  Jour.  Pharm. ) 
September,  1907.  J 
Obituaries. 
437 
Paris,  where  he  rose  later  to  a  full  professorship,  only  leaving  the 
school  in  1900,  when  he  was  chosen  the  successor  of  Troost  in  a 
professorship  at  the  Sorbonne,  the  highest  educational  institution  in 
Paris.  He  had  already  accomplished  much  of  value  when  he  began, 
in  1883,  the  study  of  fluorine  compounds,  with  the  avowed  hope  of 
isolating  the  element  that  had  eluded  so  many  able  investigators 
before  him.  In  1886  he  announced  finally  and  demonstrated  to  the 
Academy  of  Sciences  the  isolation  of  this  interesting  element.  In 
1897,  moreover,  in  conjunction  with  Sir  James  Dewar,  in  London, 
he  succeeded  in  liquefying  it.  In  1892  he  turned  to  the  line  of  work 
with  which  his  name  is  chiefly  associated,  viz.,  the  study  of  chemical 
reactions,  brought  about  by  the  high  temperature  of  the  electric  arc, 
or,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  the  work  with  the  electric  oven.  He  was 
led  to  take  up  these  high-temperature  researches  chiefly  by  his 
desire  to  solve  the  mystery  of  the  origin  of  the  diamond.  The  result 
of  his  work  was  the  formation  of  the  diamond  by  forcing  the  crys- 
tallization of  carbon  dissolved  in  cast  iron  on  immersing  this  latter 
when  in  the  molten  state  into  cold  water.  He  also  prepared  and 
studied  for  the  first  time  pure  molten  chromium,  tungsten,  molyb- 
denum, uranium,  titanium  and  other  metals,  formed  and  described 
a  large  number  of  metallic  carbides,  borides,  and  silicides  of  the 
metals.  His  published  papers  are  said  to  have  numbered  over 
300.  He  was  president  of  the  International  Congress  of  Applied 
Chemistry,  held  at  Paris  in  1900,  and  twice  visited  this  country,  first 
at  the  time  of  the  Princeton  University  Centenary  and  again  in  1904, 
when  he  read  a  paper  before  the  Chemical  Congress  at  St.  Louis 
on  "Recent  Advances  in  Inorganic  Chemistry."  In  1906  he 
received  the  greatest  honor  from  outside  of  France,  the  Nobel  Prize 
for  Chemistry.  Had  he  lived  to  the  full  measure  of  a  man's  life,  he 
would  have  undoubtedly  done  many  more  great  things  for  chemical 
science  by  reason  of  his  great  experimental  skill  and  equally  great 
industry  and  devotion  to  science. 
On  the  1 8th  of  March  occurred  the  death  of  the  greatest  living 
chemist  of  France  and  one  of  the  greatest  of  any  country,  namely, 
Marcelin  Berthelot,  in  his  eightieth  year.  In  France,  where  hero- 
worship  prevails  to  a  greater  degree  than  with  us,  he  was  honored 
by  a  State  funeral,  which  the  President  and  the  officers  of  both 
chambers  of  the  legislative  body  attended,  and  was  buried  in  the 
Pantheon  with  the  great  men  of  his  country. 
