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
"The last years of the master's life," his German eulogist says, "were
often troubled by illness, but there were not wanting bright days
which the love of his students and colleagues prepared for him." Such
a one was the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his
professorship at Bonn, June 1, 1892, in which the students and
officers participated with cordial unanimity. The ceremony began in
the morning with an enthusiastic ovation by the students. The chemical
theater was decorated with plants; the benzene hexagon was figured on
the blackboard with garlands of flowers, in the midst of which the
letters A. K. were wrought in a monogram of roses. Alfred Helle, one
of the chemical students, delivered a felicitous address, in which he
congratulated his fellow-students on being privileged to sit at the
feet of the greatest of living chemists, after which three cheers were
given to the professor. Kekulé responded to the offering in an address
giving some of the details of his life, from which we have already
quoted. Kekulé's personal staff and the officers of the university
then presented their congratulations.
In the evening the students honored him with a torchlight procession,
it being the third time he had received this, the most conspicuous
honor which is bestowed by German students. The first occasion was in
1875, when he declined the professorship at Munich; the second was in
1878, when he was rector of the university, and was given in
celebration of the restoration of unity among the students, after a
long period of disunion. Among the torchbearers on that occasion was
the present Emperor of Germany.
During the later period of his life Kekulé was comparatively sterile.
Those who knew him, however, Professor Thorpe says, "would be the
first to affirm that this seeming apathy sprang from no natural
indifference. There is no doubt that he suffered, even in the early
period of middle life, from the intense stress and strain of his
mental labors prior to the Ghent period. He too surely exemplified the
sad truth of Liebig's saying that he who would become a great chemist
must pay for his pre-eminence by the sacrifice of his health. There is
reason to know that it was the consciousness of failing power which
prevented him from finishing much to which he had put his hand, and
that his fastidiousness and his sense of 'finish,' amounting almost to
hypercriticism, restrained him from publishing much which he realized
fell short of his ideal."
The last time Kekulé's name was brought before the public was on the
occasion of the renewal of the ancient title of nobility of his
family, as August Kekulé von Stradowitz.
Editor's Table.
_A VOICE FROM THE PULPIT._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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