Bunsen's British Students

Abstract

Just five British students of chemistry studied with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811–1899) at Marburg in the 1840s, and over a hundred with him at Heidelberg between 1852 and 1888. These pupils were largely responsible for transmitting knowledge of Bunsen's instrumental innovations such as gasometry and spectroscopy to Britain. They also voiced Bunsen's merits as an outstanding teacher. The paper traces (where possible) their careers as researchers, teachers, and industrialists. A list of Bunsen's students is included in the form of a Biographical Register.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this essay was presented at a workshop, “Crossing Boundaries: Bunsen's International Reception,” organised by Christine Nawa (Tübingen University Museum) at the 8th International Conference on the History of Chemistry at Rostock, 14–16 September 2011. I thank her and another referee for help with sources and for suggesting improvements. Thanks also to Christine Stewart for information on her great grandfather, Francis Wrightson.

Notes

1 Bunsen was elected the second Foreign Member on 1 February 1842 following on that of Liebig on 1 June 1841. The now largely forgotten Josef Redtenbacher completed the trio of German Foreign Members elected in the Society's inaugural session. See The Jubilee of the Chemical Society of London 1891 (London: Chemical Society, 1896), 193–95.

2 The Address was published in Proc. Chem. Soc. 8 (March 1892): 37–39, and Fellows (especially those who had been trained by Bunsen) were invited to sign it. The original signed document, which must have been sent to Bunsen later in 1892, is not among the Bunseniana at Heidelberg. Cf. Liebig's testimonial from his British pupils and admirers on his departure from Giessen which Liebig largely engineered himself. See W. H. Brock, Justus von Liebig. The Chemical Gatekeeper (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), 140–43.

3 The Life & Experiences of Henry Enfield Roscoe D.C.L., LL.D., F.F.S. Written By Himself (London: Macmillan, 1906). Chapters 3 and 4 consist of “Bunseniana” and memories of the University of Heidelberg. Hereafter cited as “Roscoe.”

4 Crum Brown visited Bunsen's laboratory in 1863 after graduating in medicine in Edinburgh in 1861 and spending 1862 in Kolbe's laboratory in Marburg before taking up a lectureship in chemistry at Edinburgh the same year. In 1892, the year of the Bunsen Address, he had collaborated with Bunsen's student John Gibson (1855–1914) on the orientation of new substituents in an already substituted benzene ring.

5 Valuable sources are: Christine Stock, Robert Wilhelm Bunsens Korrespondenz vor dem Antritt der Heidelberger Professur (1852)—Kritische Edition (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007), hereafter cited as “Stock”; and Rudolf Werner Soukup and Roland Zenz, “Eine Bibliothek als beredte Zeugin eines umfassenden Wandels des wissenschaftlichen Weltbilds. Teil II: Ansätze einer Rekonstruktion des wissenschaftlichen Netzwerks Bunsens unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Bunsens Privatbibliothek,” 128–51. This source is based on the matriculation lists (Matrikel) of Heidelberg only, though the essay (1–127) contains valuable information on Marburg and Breslau, Bunsen's students who sent him gifts of offprints and books, and on Bunsen's personal research. It is hosted by the Auer von Welsbach Museum in Althofen, Austria (URL http://www.althofen/at/welsbach.htm, then following the “Bunsenbibliothek” link, then “Autoren der Bunsenbibliothek Teil 2”; published online March 2011, accessed 6 May 2013). Cited below as “Soukup-Zenz.” Although not a complete listing of Bunsen's students, it adds considerably to my preliminary note on British students at Heidelberg in Newsletter RSC Historical Group (August 2009), 22–29 (hereafter cited as “Brock, Newsletter”).

6 For an obituary of Worsley, see JCS 113 (1918): 360–62.

7 Detail in P. P. Bedson's long obituary of Thorpe, JCS 129 (1926): 1031–50.

8 I have ignored Benjamin Collins Brodie (1817–1880), whose presence at Marburg in 1846 is queried by Soukup and Zenz, 44. Brodie was studying with Liebig at Marburg at this time.

9 Theodor Curtius and Johannes Rissom, eds., Geschichte des Chemischen Universitäts-Laboratorium zu Heidelberg seit Gründung durch Bunsen (Heidelberg: F. W. Rochow, 1908), 17.

10 Christine Nawa, “Hidden Transmissions: Practical Chemical Knowledge Between Germany and the United States,” Isis, in press. Nawa emphasises the practical skills that Bunsen's American students brought back to America.

11 On Harley, who became professor of medical jurisprudence at UCL and went blind in later life, see ODNB.

12 In the SS 1864 there were only 245 students at the university compared with 817 at Heidelberg. See Franz Eulenburg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig: Teubner, 1904), 305. On returning to England, Hartley assisted Robert Angus Smith in Manchester, William Odling at the Royal Institution, and Charles Bloxam at King's College, London, before becoming professor of chemistry at the Royal College of Science in Dublin in 1879. FRS (1884); knighted on retirement. See JCS 105 (1914): 1208.

13 Bunsen began work at Heidelberg in a former monastery refectory that had room for twenty students. Roscoe (47–48) mentions that Bunsen extended this by glazing the cloisters. By June 1853 he had forty-two Praktikanten working in the laboratory. The new purpose-built laboratory that was opened at the corner of Plöck and Akademiestraße in 1855 had fifty places with twenty reserved for research students (Roscoe, 50). Roscoe adds that this new lab soon became “inconveniently crowded,” and Bunsen found ways of increasing the places to about sixty in 1860. Even so, exceptionally, in the SS 1863, sixty-four students were squeezed into the laboratory (Curtius and Rissom, Geschichte, 17). My thanks to Christine Nawa for clarifying this data for me. Bunsen had a private room where about four or five advanced research students worked. See T. E. Thorpe, “Victor Meyer Memorial Lecture,” in Memorial Lectures of the Chemical Society (London: Burney & Jackson, 1900), 195; and C. Nawa, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen und sein Heidelberger Laboratorium (Frankfurt am Main: Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, 2011).

14 R. W. Bunsen, “On the radical of the cacodyls series of compounds,” Memoirs & Proceedings Chemical Society 1 (1841): 49–61; Bunsen, “On a new class of cacodyls compounds containing platinum,” Memoirs & Proceedings Chemical Society 1 (1841): 63–71. Although only the second paper is annotated as translated by Tilley, it seems logical to assume that he also translated the first paper. Tilley (?–1849) had studied with Liebig at Giessen 1840–1841 from where he must have visited Bunsen at Marburg. His career as professor of chemistry at Queen's College, Birmingham was cut short by his early death. See JCS 2 (1849): 352. He does not figure in Stock's collection of correspondence. Tilley has the honour of being the first contributor to Memoirs & Proceedings Chemical Society in 1841. Tilley may also have translated Bunsen's work on Icelandic geysers for the Cavendish Society in 1848.

15 R. F. Bunsen, “Vorläufige Resultate einer Untersuchung der in Hohofenschacht sich bildenden Gase,” Annalen der Physik und Chemie 45 (1838): 339–41. My account necessarily repeats much of the material meticulously analysed by Stock in her examination of Bunsen's correspondence prior to the Heidelberg appointment.

16 As Stock (cxxi) points out, this seems to have been the only occasion on which Bunsen sought profit from his chemical researches.

17 Wemyss Reid, ed., Memoirs and Correspondence of Lyon Playfair (London: Cassell & Co, 1899), 61–63. As a direct result of staying with James Oakes (d. 1845), Playfair married his daughter Margaret in 1846. Bunsen never married.

18 L. Cockcroft, “A Perilous Life,” Chemistry in Britain 35 (499): 49–50.

19 R. W. Bunsen and L. Playfair, “Report on the Gases Evolved from Iron Furnaces,” British Association Reports (1845): 142–86.

20 Playfair abandoned chemistry for politics in 1868.

21 For a plan, see Christoph Meinel, Die Chemie an der Universität Marburg seit Beginn des 19.Jahrhunderts (Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1978), 17.

22 See Colin A. Russell, Edward Frankland (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), 30, 68ff.

23 Piece Hall, Halifax, Yorkshire, had been erected in 1779 as a wool exchange (“piece” refers to pieces of wool). A. S. Eve and C. H. Creasey, Life of John Tyndall (London: Macmillan, 1945), 22. Both Tyndall's and Hirst's diaries (in the Royal Institution) contain vivid accounts of life in Marburg. Bunsen was Tyndall's “ideal of a university teacher”: Stock, 130. Tyndall subsequently dedicated his book, Heat: Considered as a Mode of Motion (1863) to Bunsen. This text contained a detailed discussion of Bunsen's geyser theory.

24 In 1867 Debus moved to Clifton College, Bristol, and three years later he became a lecturer at Guy's Hospital medical school in London. In 1873, at Hirst's insistence, he became professor of chemistry at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. He did not return to Germany until his retirement in 1888. FRS (1861). See ODNB.

25 R. W. Bunsen, Gasometrische Methoden (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1857). The English translation, Gasometry, also published in 1857, was made by Roscoe. See discussion in Stock, cxii and cxxvii–cxxix.

26 Stock, cxxiii.

27 Edward Frankland, Experimental Researches in Pure, Applied, and Physical Chemistry (London: van Voorst, 1877).

28 He also recommended his friend Kolbe after Kolbe had moved to lavish laboratories in Leipzig—notably to Henry Edward Armstrong in 1867.

29 Ferdinand Hurter (1824–1898), Schaffhausen, Switzerland (WS 1866). Emigrated to England 1867. Chief chemist at Gaskell & Deacon works in Widnes. By 1886 he was director and chief research chemist of Mond Leblanc (United Alkali) and a strong supporter of the Leblanc process against the Solvay process. Founded the first industrial research laboratory at Widnes in 1891. See ODNB.

30 Rudolf Messel (1848–1920), Darmstadt (WS 1867). Apprenticed to a drugs and chemicals factory in Frankfurt in 1863–1866; chemical studies at Zürich, Heidelberg, and Tübingen, where he took a Ph.D. in 1868. Assisted Roscoe at Owen's College from 1870 to 1875, when he joined the firm of Messrs Dunn, Squire & Co. at Stratford, London. With Squire he published a significant paper on a new catalytic method (platinum) of manufacturing concentrated sulfuric acid (patented). FRS (1912). See JCS 1927 (1927): 3179–82; ODNB.

31 Ludwig Mond (1839–1909), Kassel (WS 1856, WS 1857). Studied chemistry with Kolbe at Marburg in 1855 and Bunsen at Heidelberg a year later. Joined Leblanc soda works at Ringenkuhl and worked at many other chemical factories before emigrating to England in 1862 to exploit his patent for the recovery of sulphur in the Leblanc process with John Hutchinson & Co at Widnes. He acquired British nationality in 1867 and took up the Solvay process for making sodium carbonate in 1872. A millionaire, in 1884 he retired to London, where he built a private laboratory for his research on batteries, chlorine production, nickel extraction, and carbonyls. He endowed the Davy-Faraday Laboratories at the Royal Institution in 1894. FRS (1891). See JCS 113 (1918): 318–34 (the reason for the delayed obituary is unexplained); ODNB.

32 Friedrich (Fritz) Wilhelm Dupré (1834–1908), Mainz (WS 1854/55, SS 1855). Studied with Liebig before going to Heidelberg. Moved to London with his brother and their father, a wine merchant. Lecturer in chemistry at Westminster Hospital, but (although naturalised with an English wife) he returned to Germany in 1864 to work on Stassfurt deposits. See Peter Dupré, “Thudichum and Dupré—brothers-in-law,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 86 (1993): 417–20.

33 Alphons Oppenheim (1833–1877), Hamburg. Following chemical studies at Bonn and with Wöhler at Gottingen, he assisted Bunsen at Heidelberg in 1857. He married an Englishwoman and assisted Hofmann at the RCC and Williamson at UCL. In 1861 he studied with Wurtz in Paris and then habilitated at Berlin in 1868. He returned to England because of his wife's ill health and committed suicide at Hastings on her death. He worked on terpenes and made German translations of Odling's Manual of Chemistry and Wurtz's Histoire. See Algemeine Deutsche Biographie (online ed., http://www.deutsche-biographie.de, 394–96, accessed 1 March 2013).

34 August Dupré (1835–1907), Mainz (WS 1854, SS 1855). Studied with Liebig and Will at Giessen in 1852 before joining Bunsen for a doctorate. He moved to London with his father and brother and assisted William Odling at Guy's Hospital. He succeeded his brother at Westminster Hospital in 1864 and taught toxicology, including spectroscopic techniques, until his resignation in 1897. He became a British citizen in 1866. In 1871 he was appointed chemical referee with the Medical Department of the Privy Council, for whom he published much on water analysis. Later he worked on the Government Explosives Committee. FRS (1875). See JCS, Transactions 93 (1908): 2269–75, and A. W. Hofmann's notice in Ber. Dtsch. Chem. Ges. 10 (1877): 2262–91.

35 Hermann Johann Philipp Sprengel (1834–1906), Schillerslage (WS 1857, SS 1858). After initial studies with Wó´hler in Göttingen, he took his doctorate with Bunsen at Heidelberg. In 1859 he assisted Brodie at Oxford. From 1863 taught at Guy's and St Bartholomew's Hospitals and took British citizenship. In 1865 he became an independent industrial chemist, assisting Messrs Thomas Farmer in the production of nitric and sulphuric acids. He developed the eponymous vacuum pump in 1865, which Bunsen adopted and adapted for accelerated filtration. He made extensive investigations of explosives. FRS (1878). See ODNB, and Rudolph Messel's notice in JCS, Transactions 91 (1907): 661–63.

36 Wilhelm Dittmar (1833–1892). Umstrach, Hessen (SS 1857). He was successively an assistant to Bunsen in Heidelberg, Roscoe at Owen's College, and Playfair at Edinburgh. He returned to Germany between 1869 and 1871 to teach agricultural chemistry at a Research Institute in Poppelsdorff, and returned to assist Crum Brown in Edinburgh in 1872 before being appointed a lecturer at Owen's College the following year. Finally, in 1874, he was appointed to a chair at Anderson's College, Glasgow. FRS (1882). See Proc. Inst. Chem. (1892): 17–18.

37 Carl Ludwig Schorlemmer (1834–1892), Darmstadt (WS 1855). Attended school with Dittmar, who encouraged him to take up science. While working in an apothecary's shop in Heidelberg, he attended Bunsen's lectures. Studied with Will and Kopp (who inspired his interest in history) in Giessen in 1858. In 1859 he became Roscoe's assistant at Owen's College, and in 1874 was named as professor of organic chemistry (the first such named chair in the UK). A friend of Marx and Engels, he made his name from work on the paraffin series. FRS (1871). He collaborated with Roscoe on the two-volume Treatise on Chemistry (1877–1892). Author of Rise and Development of Organic Chemistry (1879). See Ber. Deuts. Chem. Ges. 25 (1892): 1107–23; ODNB.

38 Roscoe, 107.

39 Heinrich Debus, Erinnerungen an Robert Wilhelm Bunsen und seine wissenschafttlichen Leistungen (Kassel: Th. G. Fisher, 1901).

40 Pupils at Queenwood ranged in ages from 12 to 20, which made instruction a “stomach-churning” ordeal for Debus teaching in a foreign language. See Stock, 123.

41 I base this remark on evidence in Hirst's Diaries held in the Royal Institution.

42 Curtius and Rissom, Geschichte, 16–17.

43 These are underestimates since the figures twenty-six and three refer only to students who later contributed to Bunsen's personal library with books and offprints.

44 L. W. McCay, “My Student Days in Germany,” J. Chem. Educ. 7 (1930): 1081–99.

45 My list would include (in order of decreasing significance) Frankland (RCC), Roscoe (Manchester), Ramsay (UCL), Thorpe (Leeds), Smithells (Leeds), and Japp (Aberdeen).

46 H. Roscoe, “Bunsen Memorial Lecture,” 29 March 1900, in Chemical Society Memorial Lectures 1893–1900 (London: Gurney & Jackson, 1901); reprinted in R. W. Bunsen, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, 3 vols (Leipzig, 1904), vol. 1.

47 My list identifies thirteen, but I suspect there were more. A search through University of Manchester Register of Graduates and Holders of Diplomas and Certificates 1851–1958 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), which is also online, produced no further information.

48 Roscoe, 251. According to Colin Lees and Alex Robertson, “Owens College: A. J. Scott and the Struggle Against Prodigious Antagonistic Forces,” Bulletin John Rylands Library 78 (1996): 155–72, the scholarships were the result of a public meeting in 1851 to commemorate Dalton. The scholarships are still awarded, but no central list has ever been kept.

49 Debus, Dittmar, August Dupré, Messel, Mond, Schorlemmer, and Sprengel.

50 This is, of course, why we are able to identify them! For Liebig's British pupils, see Brock, Justus von Liebig, 342–51.

51 J. B. Morrell, “The Chemist Breeders: The Research Schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson,” Ambix 19 (1972): 1–46. Gerald L. Geison and Frederic L. Holmes, eds., “Research Schools: Historical Reappraisals,” Osiris 8 (1993).

52 Thomas Weber, Our Friend “The Enemy”. Elite Education in Britain and Germany before World War 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). This international college still exists.

53 Following his suicide, Meyer was succeeded in 1898 by Theodor Curtius (a pupil of Kolbe's) who served until 1926.

54 Since there was little difference, apart from salary and conditions of service, between teaching in a secondary school and in a university or college of higher education, I have included schoolteachers. In the twenty-first century it is startling to reflect how schoolteachers were able to conduct research in secondary schools such as Clifton College and Manchester Grammar School. I have included Walter Flight as an academic museum worker.

55 My estimates are based upon my own list of Liebig's students in Brock, Justus von Liebig, 342–51, from which American students have been deleted.

56 Debus, Erinnerungen, Vorwort.

57 This point is developed further in Nawa, “Hidden Transmissions.” Another important training school, as opposed to research school, was that of Carl Remigius Fresenius (1818–1897) at Wiesbaden.

58 See J. B. Morrell, “W. H. Perkin, Jr., at Manchester and Oxford,” in Geison and Holmes, “Research Schools,” 104–26.

59 I have discounted his identification with the paint chemist William Baird (1869–1934), who was born in Clapton, London, and who had no middle name starting with C. For this William Baird, see JPIC 58 (1934): 160.

60 Misidentified as Sir William Phipson Beale in Brock, Newsletter.

61 Misidentified in Brock, Newsletter as Jacob Bryant Ellis.

62 Misreported as two different people, Joseph Herbert Crossby and Joseph Herbert Crossley, in Brock, Newsletter.

63 Soukup and Zenz mistranscribed the double ‘f’ as double ‘s’ and gave the surname as Gunlisse.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

W. H. Brock

A former Editor of Ambix (1968–1980), Dr Brock is Emeritus Professor of History of Science at the University of Leicester. Email: [email protected]