Taming The Primeval Forest

In nature, organic compounds are usually found in incredibly complex mixtures. Destructive distillation of a sample of coal produces hundreds of compounds in easily measurable quantities and thousands of compounds if one wishes to measure trace levels. If a chemist wishes to determine the formula of a compound, it must first be separated from other compounds and rigorously purified. Even today, absolute separation of compounds cannot always be achieved using /in-de-millenrdum techniques. 

These errors may appear to be negligible. While they would be for determining simple formulas such as CH, the errors would be significant for formulas such as CjgH3gO and would interfere with the understanding of carbon s valence. 

Here are the results of a state-of-the-art analysis reported by Adolph Strecker in Liebig s laboratory at the University ofGiessen in 1848 the formula for cholic acid was found to be C4gH3gOg (with the atomic weights C = 6 O = 8). The present day formula is C24H4QO5 (C = 12 O = 16). It is obvious that the results are accurate but not enough to hit the formula on the head. Yet that is precisely what is needed to make sense of carbon s valence. 

Liebig had joined the Giessen faculty in 1824 and became Co-Editor of the Magazinfur Phanmzie. In 1832, he assumed sole editorship, changed the title to Annalen der Chemie und Phanmzie and the tough, caustic lion made it a vital chemical journal. He built a renowned research and teaching school at Giessen and by 1852 he had influenced about 700 students of chemistry and pharmacy.  

In that year, he moved to the University of Munich but his health no longer permitted him to work in the laboratory. His intensity probably contributed to his poor health and he spent his final 20 years in bitter chemical controversies. His friend Wohler, whose sense of humor was reflected in an 1843 paper he published in the Anmlen under the pseudonym S.C.H. Windier, lived to reach the age of 82. He trained over 20 American chemists. Among these were Ira Remsen, who started at Johns Hopkins University the first American Ph.D. program in chemistry as well as Edgar Fahs Smith at the University of Pennsylva- 

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