Justus von Liebig. Gatekeeper of Chemistry

摘要

There is no doubt that Liebig was frequently hot-tempered, quarrelsome and tenacious of erroneous views which he later quietly dropped. As editor of the Annalen der Chemie, which he created in 1832 and which continues today as Liebigs Annalen, he was able to publicise both his own work and that of his pupils, while also using its pages to criticise other chemists severely. A giant amongst nineteenth-century German chemists, his charismatic power as a teacher and friend was well conveyed by A. W. Hofmann: 'Each word of his carried instruction, every intonation of his voice bespoke regard; his approval was a mark of honour, and of whatever else we might be proud, our greatest pride of all was in having him for our master. Little wonder, then, that Elizabet Ney believed that this was the man to help make King Ludwig into a statesman. It was not to be: Ludwig had already withdrawn too far into his strange private world, while Liebig, stricken by cerebral meningitis in 1870 that prevented him from accepting an invitation to give The Chemical Society's second Faraday Lecture that year, had little capacity for work in his final years. He died on 18 April 1873, a month short of his seventieth birthday.