Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
he thus introduced, has shown itself to be capable of boundless
expansion.
Kekulé's students all speak admiringly of his qualities as a teacher.
The memorialist of the German Chemical Society said: "All of us who
have attended his lectures or heard him in other places will ever
remember what a teacher Kekulé was. With incomparable lucidity and
sometimes with the happiest humor, he could go playfully through the
theme he was considering, masterfully presenting it in new and often
surprising aspects. The charm of his personality affected all who came
in contact with him; it was the geniality which shone out of his whole
being, and involuntarily commanded admiration. Numerous pupils flocked
to him, and many of those who to-day fill chairs of chemistry in
Germany and other countries have made his name highly honored."
Professor Thorpe, of London, who spent a little time in Kekulé's
laboratory, describes him as having been one of the very best
expositors, with the single possible exception of Kirchhoff, to whom
it had been his lot to listen. As a laboratory teacher he was
excellent. He was a most severe judge of work, striving to exact the
same high manipulative finish, the same neatness and order, which he
invariably bestowed on everything he did, and he was absolutely
intolerant of anything slovenly or "sloppy." "But it was as a lecturer
that he was seen at his best. He was singularly luminous as a thinker,
a close and accurate reasoner, with a remarkable power of concentrated
expression.... His language was apt and well chosen, and his delivery
easy and natural"; and his whole address showed that every detail had
been carefully considered.
At a distance of thirty years, Professor Dewar said, at the London
memorial meeting, that to look back and call to mind the presence and
personality of the great chemist as he knew him was indeed a pleasure.
He was a man of noble mien, handsome, dignified, and yet of a homely
and kindly disposition. He was a severe critic, having a haughty
contempt for the accidental and bizarre in scientific work. His
originality and suggestiveness seemed endless, so that he had no need
to commit trespass or to follow just in the wake of other people's
ideas. "Everything that passed through the Kekulé alembic was indeed
transmuted into pure gold. His precision of thought and diction
rendered his papers profoundly suggestive to other workers."
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