Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
=Death of Professor Bunsen.=--With the death of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen,
at Heidelberg, August 16th, the world loses a student whose name is
inseparably connected with nearly all the chemical work that has been
done in the last fifty years, for it is safe to say that hardly a
discovery has been made or experiment performed to the success of
which some process, property, or instrument discovered, invented, or
suggested by Bunsen, and usually named after him, has not contributed.
A sketch of this illustrious chemist, with a portrait, and an
enumeration of his principal works, each of which might be
characterized as a milestone in the advance of the science, was
published in the Popular Science Monthly for August, 1881 (vol. xix,
page 550). One of the principal events in his life since that sketch
was published was his election, in 1883, as one of the eight foreign
associates of the French Academy of Sciences--the highest honor that
that institution is competent to confer. Besides Bunsen's personal
interest in the work and success of his students, one of his most
salient traits, as described by a careful and appreciative biographer
in the New York Evening Post, was his absentmindedness concerning what
he had himself accomplished. He was afflicted with an "incipient
aphasia," which made it impossible for him to talk about them. "He
could not answer verbal questions, whether oral or written. He could
not have passed a decent examination in his own discoveries. Let the
question come in the shape of an emergency in a chemical operation,
and a wealth of knowledge would be poured out, but let it be put in
words and he could not answer it." He is said to have answered a
student once, who asked him about some substance, that he knew nothing
about it--"You will have to look up the literature." The student
looked up the literature, and found that it consisted of a single
article, and that by Bunsen! Professor Bunsen prized what would
stimulate him to effort, enjoyed life, was fond of travel and
interested in everything human, and was a good novel reader.
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