JUSTUS LIEBIG was born at Darmstadt, on the 12th of May 1803. The main facts which mark his life regarded apart from his work as a chemist are soon told. Showing a taste for making experiments he was apprenticed by his father to an apothecary. Fortunately for science he did not long remain as a concoctor of drugs, but was allowed to enter the University of Bonn as a student of medicine. From Bonn he went to Erlangen, at which university he graduated in 1821. A year or two before this time Liebig had begun his career as an investigator of Nature, and he had already made such progress that the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt was prevailed on to grant him a small pension and allow him to prosecute his researches at Paris, which was then almost the only place where he could hope to find the conditions of success for the study of scientific chemistry. To Paris accordingly he went in 1823. He was so fortunate--thanks to the good graces of the renowned naturalist Alexander von Humboldt--as to be allowed to enter the laboratory of Gay-Lussac, where he continued the research on a class of explosive compounds, called _fulminates_, which he had begun before leaving Darmstadt. A year later Liebig was invited to return to his native country as Professor of Chemistry in the small University of Giessen--a name soon to be known wherever chemistry was studied, and now held dear by many eminent chemists who there learned what is meant by the scientific study of Nature. The year before Liebig entered the laboratory of Gay-Lussac there came to Paris a young and enthusiastic student who had already made himself known in the scientific world by his physiological researches, and who was now about to begin his career as a chemist. In that southern part of France which is rich in memories of the Roman occupation, not far from the remains of the great aqueduct which spans the valley of the Gardon, at no great distance from the famous cities of Arles and Nimes, was born, in the town of Alais, on the 14th of July 1800, JEAN BAPTISTE ANDRE DUMAS. The father of Dumas was a man of considerable culture; he gave his son as good an education as could be obtained in the little town of his birth. At the age of fourteen young Dumas was a good classical scholar, and had acquired a fair knowledge of natural science. But for his deficiency in mathematics he would probably have entered for the examination which admitted those who passed it to join the French navy. But before he had made good his mathematical deficiencies the troublous nature of the times (1814-15) obliged his parents to think of some other profession for their son which would entail less sacrifice on their part. Like his great fellow-worker in after life he was apprenticed to an apothecary, and like him also, he soon forsook this sphere of usefulness.