At the age of eighty-two years, and full of honor, after a life actively
devoted to scientific work of the highest and most accurate kind, which
has contributed more than that of any other contemporary to establish
the principles on which an exact science like chemistry is founded, the
illustrious Wöhler has gone to his rest.
After he had worked for some time with Berzelius in Sweden, he taught
chemistry from 1825 to 1831 at the Polytechnic School in Berlin; then
till 1836 he was stationed at the Higher Polytechnic School at Cassel,
and then he became Ordinary Professor of Chemistry in the University of
Göttingen, where he remained till his death. He was born, July 31, 1800,
at Eschersheim, near Frankfort-on-the-Main.
Until the year 1828 it was believed that organic substances could only
be formed under the influence of the vital force in the bodies of
animals and plants. It was Wöhler who proved by the artificial
preparation of urea from inorganic materials that this view could not be
maintained. This discovery has always been considered as one of the most
important contributions to our scientific knowledge. By showing that
ammonium cyanate can become urea by an internal arrangement of its
atoms, without gaining or losing in weight, Wöhler furnished one of the
first and best examples of isomerism, which helped to demolish the old
view that equality of composition could not coexist in two bodies, A
and B, with differences in their respective physical and chemical
properties. Two years later, in 1830, Wöhler published, jointly with
Liebig, the results of a research on cyanic and cyanuric acid and on
urea. Berzelius, in his report to the Swedish Academy of Sciences,
called it the most important of all researches in physics, chemistry,
and mineralogy published in that year. The results obtained were quite
unexpected, and furnished additional and most important evidence in
favor of the doctrine of isomerism. In the year 1834, Wöhler and Liebig
published an investigation of the oil of bitter almonds. They prove by
their experiments that a group of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms
can behave like an element, take the place of an element, and can be
exchanged for elements in chemical compounds. Thus the foundation was
laid of the doctrine of compound radicals, a doctrine which has had
and has still the most profound influence on the development of
chemistry--so much so that its importance can hardly be exaggerated.
Since the discovery of potassium by Davy, it was assumed that alumina
also, the basis of clay, contained a metal in combination with oxygen.
Davy, Oerstedt, and Berzelius attempted the extraction of this metal,
but could not succeed. Wöhler then worked on the same subject, and
discovered the metal aluminum. To him also is due the isolation of the
elements yttrium, beryllium, and titanium, the observation that silicium
can be obtained in crystals, and that some meteoric stones contain
organic matter. He analyzed a number of meteorites, and for many years
wrote the digest on the literature of meteorites in the _Jahresbericht
der Chemie_; he possessed, perhaps, the best private collection of
meteoric stones and irons existing. Wöhler and Sainte Claire Deville
discovered the crystalline form of boron, and Wöhler and Buff the
hydrogen compounds of silicium and a lower oxide of the same element.
This is by no means a full statement of Wöhler's scientific work; it
even does not mention all the discoveries which have had great influence
on the theory of chemistry. The mere titles of the papers would fill
several closely-printed pages. The journals of every year from 1820 to
1881 contain contributions from his pen, and even his minor publications
are always interesting. As was truly remarked ten years ago, when it was
proposed by a Fellow of the Royal Society that a Copley medal should be
conferred upon him, "for two or three of his researches he deserves the
highest honor a scientific man can obtain, but the sum of his work is
absolutely overwhelming. Had he never lived, the aspect of chemistry
would be very different from that it is now."
While sojourning at Cassel, Wöhler made, among other chemical
discoveries, one for obtaining the metal nickel in a state of purity,
and with two attached friends he founded a factory there for the
preparation of the metal.
Among the works which he published were "Grundriss der Anorganischen
Chemie," Berlin, 1830, and the "Grundriss der Organischen Chemie,"
Berlin, 1840. Nor must we omit to mention "Praktischen Uebringen der
Chemischen Analyse," Berlin, 1854, and the "Lehrbuch der Chemie,"
Dresden, 1825, 4 vols.
At a sitting of the Academy, held on October 2, 1882, M. Jean Baptiste
Dumas, the permanent secretary, with profound regret, made known
the intelligence of the death of the illustrious foreign associate,
Friedrich Wöhler, professor in the University of Göttingen. He said: "M.
Friedrich Wöhler, the favorite pupil of Berzelius, had followed in the
lines and methods of work of his master. From 1821 till his last year he
has continuously published memoirs or simple notes, always remarkable
for their exactness, and often of such a nature that they took among
contemporaneous production the first rank by their importance, their
novelty, or their fullness. Employed chiefly, during his sojourn in
Sweden, in work on mineral chemistry, he has remained all his life the
undisputed chief in this branch of science in German universities. This
preparation and preoccupation, which one might have thought sufficient
to occupy his time, did not, however, prevent him from taking the chief
part in the development of organic chemistry, and of filling one of the
most elevated positions in it.
"His contemporaries have not forgotten the unusual sensation produced by
the unexpected discovery by which he was enabled to make artificially,
and by a purely chemical method, urea, the most nitrogenous of animal
substances. Other transformations or combinations giving birth to
substances which, until then, had only been met with in animals or
plants, have since been obtained, but the artificial formation of urea
still remains the neatest and most elegant example of this order of
creation. All chemists know and admire the classical memoir in which
Wöhler and Liebig some time after made known the nature of the benzoic
series, and connected them with the radicals of which we may consider
them as being the derivatives comparable with products of a mineral
nature. Their memoirs on the derivatives of uric acid, a prolific source
of new and remarkable substances, has been an inexhaustible mine in the
hands of their successors.
"This is not a moment when we should pretend to review the work which M.
Wöhler has done in mineral chemistry. Among the 240 papers which he has
published in scientific journals, there are few which the treatises of
chemistry have not immediately turned to account. We need only confine
ourselves to the discovery of aluminum, to which the energy and
inventive genius of our _confrère_, Henry Deville, soon gave a place
near the noble metals. United by a rivalry which would have divided
less noble minds, these two great chemists carried on together their
researches in chemistry, and joined their forces to clear up points
still obscure in the history of boron, silicium, and the metals of
the platinum group, and remained closely united, which each year only
strengthened.
"The reader will pardon me a souvenir entirely personal. We were born,
M. Wöhler and I, in 1800. I am his senior by a few days. Our scientific
life began at the same date, and during sixty years everything has
combined to bind more closely the links of brotherhood which has existed
for so long a time."
* * * * *