| OCR Text |
Show l99 Justus von Liebig (1803 - l873) Born in Darmstadt, Liebig was a poor student at school but persist- ed, and later studied under C. w. G. Kastner (l783-l857) at Erlangen and obtained his Ph.D. degree at the age of l9. He was not, however, very satisfied with his studies at Erlangen, and he moved to Paris where he worked with L. N. Vauquelin, M. E. Chevreuil and Gay-Lussac. Gay-Lussac, who probably had the major influence on Liebig, did research in the house of Berthollet at Arceuil and it was this time (l80l) that he did the work on the expansion of gases for which he is now chiefly remembered. Berthollet, who is best known for his work on chemical nomenclature and stoichiometry, studied chemistry in Paris under P-J. Macquer, of whom I have more to say later. Macquer was a student of G.-F. Rouelle, an apothecary, and I have been unable to trace ‘the genealogy back any further. Even if we had chosen Vauquelin or Chevreuil as the major influence on Liebig, we would still go back to Macquer, because Chevreuil studied under A. F. de Fourcroy who was a student of Macquer. The latest common ancestor of a group of chemists depends, of course, on their field of interest and to some extent on their nationality. As far as I can tell from my own studies and those of others, practically every physical chemist today, at any rate in the western world, can be traced back to Liebig. |
