Abstract
THE sad death of Dr.Augustus Matthiessen, which we briefly referred to in a. previous number, has bereft English chemical and physical science of one of the most arduous and successful workers who ever entered her ranks. Born January 1831, in London, he from early youth upwards, manifested a great liking for chemistry, but it was not until he came of age that he entered upon its study in earnest at the University of Giessen, where he subsequently took his doctor's degree, and afterwards at Heidelberg, where, for nearly four years, he worked under the guidance of Bunsen and Kirchhoff. His first paper, “ On the Preparation of the Metals of the Alkalies and Alkaline Earths by Electrolysis,” appeared in the Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie for March 1855, and was devoted to a description of the preparation and properties of the metals calcium and strontium, then isolated for the first time. Calcium he found to be a metal of the colour and glance of bell metal, exceedingly ductile and malleable; using water as the exciting fluid, he found it to be electropositive to magnesium, and electronegative to sodium and potassium, which at once explained why it could not be obtained from its chloride by the action of sodium or potassium at high temperatures. Next in order is a paper of his in Poggendorf's Annalen for 1857, communicated by Kirchhoff, in whose laboratory the results were worked out, entitled, “ On the Electric Conductivity of Potassium, Sodium, Lithium, Magnesium, Calcium, and Strontium.” Following this, appear in Poggendorf's Annalen for 1858 two communications from him " On the Electric Conductivity of Metals," and “ On the Thermo-electric Series.” On his return to London he worked some time at the Royal College of Chemistry under Hofmann, and published a paper “ On the Action of Nitrous Acid on Aniline.” Hunt had described phenol, free nitrogen and water as the products of this reaction, but he found that an intermediate reaction took place, by which ammonia was formed; extending his experiments to ethyl and diethylaniline, he obtained ethylamine and diethylamine. It was this reaction which first led him to the study of narcotine, which afterwards in his hands yielded such splendid results. After working diligently several years in a laboratory which he fitted up for himself in Torrington Square, he was appointed Professor of Chemistry to St. Mary's Hospital in 1862. It was about this period that his most important researches were carried out in conjunction with Dr. Vogt, Von Bose, Holzmann, & c., and published in a series of papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, to which he was admitted a Fellow in 1861. Some of the most important of these papers are those “ On the Influence of Temperature on the Electric Conducting Power of Metals.” It was this research which proved the important fact, that the conducting power of the pure metals decreased to the same extent between o° and 100° C.; two remarkable exceptions, however, to this law, Iron and Thallium were the subject of a later paper; “ On the Specific Gravity of Metals and Alloys;” “ On the Chemical Nature of Alloys,” in which he showed that nearly all the two-metal alloys may be considered as solidified solutions of the one metal in the other. Also a long series of determinations of the influence of temperature on the conducting power of alloys. He also made a most careful redetermination of the expansion of water and mercury, and found that Kopp's coefficients were slightly too low. He was a very active member of the committee appointed by the British Association " On the Standards of Electri-.cal Resistance," and it was one of the alloys discovered by him which was finally adopted for the reproduction of the now well known B A unit of electrical resistance. H is later chemical work is embodied in a series of papers in the Philosophical Transitions—“ On the Chemical Constitution of Narcotine”—published partly in conjunction with Prof. Foster, and partly with Dr. Wright. In these he shows that one, two, and three atoms of methyl can be successively removed from narcotine, and also describes a large number of interesting derivatives of the same. In 1869 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and in .the same year received the Royal Society's Gold Medal for his published researches on the metals and the opium alkaloids. One of the most important results of his last investigation is the discovery .of the relation between morphia and codeia, the latter simply containing one of methyl more than the former; although, however, he succeeded in obtaining apomorphia from codeia, he was never able to reconvert apomorphia into morphia, and thus form morphia direct from codeia. At the time of his death he was occupied with the'experiments'on the chemical nature of pure cast-iron, of the Committee appointed to inquire into which he was a member, and also with experiments with a view to determine whether the specific heat of platinum was constant at high temperatures, and if so, to employ it in the construction of a standard pyrometer. He was also prosecuting his researches on the opium bases, and had already arrived at interesting results, which we believe will shortly be published. All the beforementioned researches display an enormous amount of manipulative skill, and there is little doubt that his success was mainly due to the wonderful acuteness of his powers of observation, and also to his great perseverance; but it is indeed surprising that, labouring under the physicaldisad vantages he did, he should have been able to attain such ends.
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Augustus Matthiessen . Nature 2, 517–518 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/002517c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/002517c0