Victor Meyer: A celebrated chemist

VICTOR MEYER was born (September 8, 1848, Berlin) in a wealthy Jewish family. As a boy he showed keen interest in the theatre and wanted to become an actor: These gifts were to be employed later as a scholarly and effective teacher. But his family persuaded him to attend lectures at Heidelberg.

Meeting the chemist Robert Bunsen, his interests changed to chemistry. Besides Kopp and Bunsen, his teachers were Kirchoff and Helmholtz, all eminent scientists. He topped the class in all his courses and was awarded the Ph.D., `Summa cum laude' at the young age of 18. Meyer worked as assistant to Bunsen for one year, performing analysis of the mineral waters of Baden. He worked for three years (1868- 71) in Baeyer's lab, when he began publishing in organic chemistry.

In 1871, he became Professor at the Stuttgart polytechnic. His career was spread among three famous centres of learning - Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (1872-85), University of Goettingen (1885- 88) and University of Heidelberg (1889-97). It was the efforts of Bunsen that enabled Meyer to obtain release from Goeltingen and became his successor at Heidelberg, which proved to be good fortune for chemistry.

Meyer and his students published more than 300 papers, many of fundamental importance. HIs first significant paper (1870) described a new method for introducing the carboxyl group into an aromatic substance by heating potassium salts of aromatic sulfonic acids with sodium formate. This method has been used ever since by organic chemists for the synthesis of aromatic acids. Meyer's primary aim was to ascertain the constitution of benzene derivatives.

Meyer proposed in 1872 the existence of two series of isometric organic nitrogen compounds. During his year at Stuttgart, he discovered a general method for the preparation of nitroparaffins and investigated this problem during his first four years at Zurich. He explored this area so thoroughly that, it was acclaimed at the time of his death, almost all that was known about nitro compounds was due to Meyer, and his students.

Meyer then explored a variety of organic nitrogen compounds and discovered several new types. The most important was his preparation of the first oximes through the reaction between hydroxylamine and an aldehyde. A new area of investigation that he stumbled on was by a lecture demonstration that failed. He wanted to show the students that the addition of isatin and sulphuric acid to benzene produces the blue colour reaction. The results were negative.

Meyer took up the investigations of the Baeyer's indophenine test for benzene. He proposed several hypotheses, one of which was that coal-tar benzene was a mixture of two substances with similar properties and that only one of these substances combined with isatin. In 1883 he isolated this substance and named it ``thiophene'', because of its similarity to phenyl compounds. He also proved that it had a ring structure.

Victor Meyer got world-wide renown with the vapour density method he invented. Devised in three stages from 1876, it was a product of his researches: for he had to determine the molecular formulae of the substances with which he was working.

There were several methods then available but he evolved a different technique that utilised small amounts of a substance and that could be used at high temperatures. The principle of his method is that the vapour of a weighed substance displaces an equal volume of air, which in turn is measured by means of a burette. Meyer's apparatus is now standard equipment in most chemical laboratories.

Meyer's gifts as a dramatist came to his aid to captivate his students who were attracted from both Europe and North America. His concern for excellence in teaching found expression in taking up a project with his assistant Paul Jacobson. He wrote a two- volume work ``Treatise on organic chemistry'', which still remains a classic. Meyer's happy family life, with wife and five children was marred by frequent illness. His health declined during the1880's when he suffered from neuralgic pains and insomnia. He became conscious that his long suffering was affecting his thought power: suddenly he ended his life (August 8, 1897) by taking prussic acid.

R.Parthasarathy

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