THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
OCTOBER,  1899. 
ROBERT  BUNSEN. 
DIED  AUGUST  16,  1899. 
The  death  of  Prof.  Robert  Wilhelm  Eberhardt  Bunsen,  at  Heid- 
elberg, August  1 6th,  marks  the  passing  away  of  the  last  of  the 
great  German  chemists  of  the  older  school.  Liebig,  Wohler,  Hof- 
mann,  Kopp  and  Fresenius  had  all  preceded  him,  and  now,  at  the 
ripe  age  of  88,  Bunsen,  known  better  by  name,  at  least,  to  every 
laboratory  student  throughout  the  civilized  world,  has  followed 
them. 
Bunsen  was  born  March  31,  181 1,  at  Gottingen,  where  his  father 
was  a  professor  of  Oriental  Literature.  His  special  branches  of  study 
at  the  university  were  chemistry,  physics  and  zoology.  After  gradua- 
tion he  continued  his  studies  at  Paris,  Berlin  and  Vienna,  and  in 
1833  began  his  career  as  lecturer  on  chemistry  at  Gottingen.  He 
became  a  professor  of  chemistry  at  the  Polytechnic  School  at  Cassel 
in  1836,  removing  to  Marburg  in  1838,  to  Breslau  in  1 851,  and  to 
Heidelberg  in  1852,  where  the  remainder  of  his  fruitful  life  was 
spent.  How  fruitful  in  results  his  career  was  to  the  science  of 
chemistry  a  brief  review  of  the  most  important  of  his  discoveries 
will  show. 
His  first  considerable  investigation  was  that  upon  alkarsin  (fum- 
ing liquid  of  Cadet),  in  1833  and  following  years,  which  resulted  in 
the  discovery  of  cacodyl  and  the  compounds  of  arsendimethyl,  the 
first  of  the  organo-metallic  radicals,  as  well  as  the  suggestion  on  his 
part  of  ferric  hydrate  as  the  most  efficient  antidote  for  arsenic  poi- 
soning.   In  1838  and  1839  he  published  studies  on  the  composition 
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