In 1833 Liebig and Wöhler took an important step in elucidating this question by their investigations on benzoic acid and acid obtainable by distilling a resin named gum benzoin. They showed that this acid, C7H6O2, could be conceived as consisting of the group C7H5O, to which they gave the name “benzoyl,” in combination with OH; that benzoic aldehyde, C7H6O, might be regarded as its compound with hydrogen; that it also formed compounds with chlorine, and bromine, and sulphur, and replaced hydrogen in ammonia (C7H6O,NH2). They termed this group, benzoyl, a “compound element” or a “radical.” This research was followed by one by Robert Bunsen, professor at Heidelberg, born in 1811, and recently (1899) dead, which bore reference to cacodyl, a compound of arsenic, carbon and hydrogen, in which the idea of a radical was confirmed and amplified. The idea of a radical having thus become established, Jean Baptiste Andrée Dumas, professor in Paris (1800–1884), propounded the theory of “substitution,” _i.e._, that an element such as chlorine or oxygen (which, be it noticed, is electro-negative on Berzelius’s scale) could replace hydrogen in carbon compounds, atom for atom, the resulting compound belonging to the same “type” as the one from which it was derived. And Laurent, warden of the mint at Paris (1807–1853), and Gerhardt, professor at Montpelier and at Strasburg (1816–1856), emphasized the fact that one element, be it what it may, can replace another without fundamentally altering its chemical character, and also that an atom of hydrogen can be replaced by a group of atoms or radical, behaving for the occasion like the atom of an element. It is to Laurent and Gerhardt that we owe the definition of an atom—_the smallest quantity of an element which can be present in a compound_; an equivalent—_that weight of an element which combines with or replaces one part by weight of hydrogen_; and a molecule—_the smallest quantity which can exist in a free state, whether of an element or a compound_. They recognized, too, that a molecule of hydrogen, chlorine, etc., consists of two atoms. In 1849 Wurtz, professor in Paris (1817–1884), and Hofmann, then professor in the College of Chemistry in London, afterwards at Berlin (1818–1892), discovered a series of compounds allied to ammonia, NH3, in which one or more atoms of hydrogen were replaced by a group or radical, such as methyl (CH3), ethyl (C2H5), or phenyl (C6H5). Wurtz referred such compounds to the ammonia “type.” They all resemble ammonia in their physical properties—smell, taste, etc.—as well as in their power of uniting with acids to form salts resembling ammonium chloride (NH4Cl), and other ammonium compounds. Shortly afterwards Williamson, professor at University College, London, added the “water type,” in consequence of his researches on “mixed ethers”—bodies in which the hydrogen of water might be regarded as replaced by organic radicals. Thus we have the series: