1. Chemistry: Jacobus H. van't Hoff
2. Physics: Wilhelm C. Röntgen
4. Literature: Rene F. A. Sully Prudhomme
5. Peace: Jean Hentry Dunant and Frédéric Passy
Biography
Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on August 30, 1852. He was the third child in a family of seven children of Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, a physician, and Alida Jacoba Kolff.In 1869 he entered the Polytechnic School at Delft and obtained his technology diploma in 1871. His decision to follow a purely scientific career, however, came soon afterwards during vacation-work at a sugar factory when he anticipated for himself a dreary profession as a technologist. After having spent a year at Leiden, mainly for mathematics, he went to Bonn to work with A.F. Kekulé from autumn 1872 to spring 1873; this period was followed by another in Paris with A. Wurtz, when he attended a large part of the curriculum for 1873-1874. He returned to Holland in 1874 and obtained his doctor's degree that same year under E. Mulder in Utrecht.
In 1876 he became lecturer at the Veterinary College at Utrecht, but left this post for a similar position at the University of Amsterdam the following year. In 1878 came his appointment as Professor of Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology at the same university. After having occupied this chair for 18 years he accepted an invitation to go to Berlin as Honorary Professor, connected with a membership of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. The principal reason for this change was the fact that he was overburdened with obligations to give elementary lectures and to examine large numbers of students, including even those for medical propaedeutics, leaving him with too little time to do his own research work. He was an ardent advocate for the creation of a special class of scientific workers. At his new post he remained till the end of his life.
van 't Hoff has acquired fame particularly by his epoch-making publications. His doctor's thesis (1874) was entitled Bijdrage tot de Kennis van Cyaanazijnzuren en Malonzuur (Contribution to the knowledge of cyanoacetic acids and malonic acid). Of far greater weight, however, was his publication which appeared several months before: Voorstel tot Uitbreiding der Tegenwoordige in de Scheikunde gebruikte Structuurformules in de Ruimte, etc. (Proposal for the development of 3-dimensional chemical structural formulae). This small pamphlet, consisting of twelve pages text and one page diagrams, gave the impetus to the development of stereochemistry. The concept of the "asymmetrical carbon atom", dealt with in this publication, supplied an explanation of the occurrence of numerous isomers, inexplicable by means of the then current structural formulae. At the same time he pointed out the existence of relationship between optical activity and the presence of an asymmetrical carbon atom.
His revolutionary ideas, however, only found acceptance after the publication, in 1875, of his Chimie dans l'Espace; especially when two years later the German translation appeared, with an introduction by J. Wislicenus. (The English translation: Chemistry in Space did not appear until 1891.) In his Dix Années dans l'Histoire d'une Théorie (Ten years in the history of a theory) he drew attention to the fact that J.A. Le Bel had independently arrived at the same ideas, though in a more abstract form.
In 1884 his book Études de Dynamique chimique (Studies in dynamic chemistry) appeared, in which he entered for the first time the field of physical chemistry. Of great importance was his development of the general thermodynamic relationship between the heat of conversion and the displacement of the equilibrium as a result of temperature variation. At constant volume, the equilibrium in a system will tend to shift in such a direction as to oppose the temperature change which is imposed upon the system. Thus, lowering the temperature results in heat development while increasing the temperature results in heat absorption. This principle of mobile equilibrium was subsequently (1885) put in a general form by Le Chatelier, who extended the principle to include compensation, by change of volume, for imposed pressure changes - it is now known as the van 't Hoff-Le Chatelier principle.
The following year, in 1885, followed L'Équilibre chimique dans les Systèmes gazeux ou dissous à I'État dilué (Chemical equilibria in gaseous systems or strongly diluted solutions), which dealt with this theory of dilute solutions. Here he demonstrated that the "osmotic pressure" in solutions which are sufficiently dilute is proportionate to the concentration and the absolute temperature so that this pressure can be represented by a formula which only deviates from the formula for gas pressure by a coefficient i. He also determined the value of i by various methods, for example by means of the vapour pressure and Raoult's results on the lowering of the freezing point. Thus van 't Hoff was able to prove that thermodynamic laws are not only valid for gases, but also for dilute solutions. His pressure laws, given general validity by the electrolytic dissociation theory of Arrhenius (1884-1887) - the first foreigner who came to work with him in Amsterdam (1888) - are considered the most comprehensive and important in the realm of natural sciences.
During his Berlin period he was from 1896 to 1905 continuously engaged on the problem of the origin of oceanic deposits, with special reference to those formed at Stassfurt. In this extensive work he was especially assisted by W. Meyerhoffer, who had previously worked with him in Amsterdam for a number of years. He was probably the first to apply small-scale results, obtained in the laboratory, to phenomena occurring on a large scale in Nature. The results of this ambitious investigation, mostly published in the Proceedings of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, were summarized by him in a two-volumes work Zur Bildung ozeanischer Salzablagerungen, 1905-1909.
van 't Hoff greatly valued the power of imagination in scientific work, as is apparent from his inaugural address on taking up his professorship in Amsterdam: Verbeeldingskracht in de Wetenschap (The power of imagination in Science), in which, after a rather elaborate study of biographies, he arrived at the conclusion that the most prominent scientists have possessed this quality in a high degree. Wilhelm Ostwald, who together with him established the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie in Leipzig, and can be regarded as founders of physical chemistry.
Of the numerous distinctions he himself mentioned the award of the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1901) to him as the culmination-point of his career. In 1885 he was appointed member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, after his nomination had been withheld in 1880 because of an insufficient number of votes - a proof that his ideas initially found little acceptance in his own country. Among his other distinctions were the honorary doctorates of Harvard and Yale (1901), Victoria University, Manchester(1903), Heidelberg (1908); the Davy Medal of the Royal Society (1893), Helmholtz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences (1911); he was also appointed Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (1894), Senator der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (1911). He was also member or honorary member of the Chemical Society, London (1898), Royal Academy of Sciences, Gottingen (1892), American Chemical Society (1898), Académie des Sciences, Paris (1905).
van 't Hoff was a lover of nature; as a student in Leyden he frequently took part in the botanical excursions, and later in Bonn he fully enjoyed the mountains in the vicinity, taking long walks in company or alone. His quite detailed description of his journey to the United States, resulting from an invitation to lecture at Chicago University, amply shows his love of travel. His receptiveness for philosophy and his predilection for poetry were already apparent in his early school years - Lord Byron was his idol.
In 1878 he married Johanna Francina Mees. They had two daughters, Johanna Francina (b. 1880) and Aleida Jacoba (b. 1882) and two sons, Jacobus Hendricus (b. 1883) and Govert Jacob (b. 1889).
Biography
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was born on March 27, 1845, at Lennep in the Lower Rhine Province of Germany, as the only child of a merchant in, and manufacturer of, cloth. His mother was Charlotte Constanze Frowein of Amsterdam, a member of an old Lennep family which had settled in Amsterdam.When he was three years old, his family moved to Apeldoorn in The Netherlands, where he went to the Institute of Martinus Herman van Doorn, a boarding school. He did not show any special aptitude, but showed a love of nature and was fond of roaming in the open country and forests. He was especially apt at making mechanical contrivances, a characteristic which remained with him also in later life. In 1862 he entered a technical school at Utrecht, where he was however unfairly expelled, accused of having produced a caricature of one of the teachers, which was in fact done by someone else.
He then entered the University of Utrecht in 1865 to study physics. Not having attained the credentials required for a regular student, and hearing that he could enter the Polytechnic at Zurich by passing its examination, he passed this and began studies there as a student of mechanical engineering. He attended the lectures given by Clausius and also worked in the laboratory of Kundt. Both Kundt and Clausius exerted great influence on his development. In 1869 he graduated Ph.D. at the University of Zurich, was appointed assistant to Kundt and went with him to Würzburg in the same year, and three years later to Strasbourg.
In 1874 he qualified as Lecturer at Strasbourg University and in 1875 he was appointed Professor in the Academy of Agriculture at Hohenheim in Württemberg. In 1876 he returned to Strasbourg as Professor of Physics, but three years later he accepted the invitation to the Chair of Physics in the University of Giessen.
After having declined invitations to similar positions in the Universities of Jena (1886) and Utrecht (1888), he accepted it from the University of Würzburg (1888), where he succeeded Kohlrausch and found among his colleagues Helmholtz and Lorenz. In 1899 he declined an offer to the Chair of Physics in the University of Leipzig, but in 1900 he accepted it in the University of Munich, by special request of the Bavarian government, as successor of E. Lommel. Here he remained for the rest of his life, although he was offered, but declined, the Presidency of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt at Berlin and the Chair of Physics of the Berlin Academy.
Röntgen's first work was published in 1870, dealing with the specific heats of gases, followed a few years later by a paper on the thermal conductivity of crystals. Among other problems he studied were the electrical and other characteristics of quartz; the influence of pressure on the refractive indices of various fluids; the modification of the planes of polarised light by electromagnetic influences; the variations in the functions of the temperature and the compressibility of water and other fluids; the phenomena accompanying the spreading of oil drops on water.
Röntgen's name, however, is chiefly associated with his discovery of the rays that he called X-rays. In 1895 he was studying the phenomena accompanying the passage of an electric current through a gas of extremely low pressure. Previous work in this field had already been carried out by J. Plucker (1801-1868), J. W. Hittorf (1824-1914), C. F. Varley (1828-1883), E. Goldstein (1850-1931), Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), H. Hertz (1857-1894) and Ph. von Lenard (1862-1947), and by the work of these scientists the properties of cathode rays - the name given by Goldstein to the electric current established in highly rarefied gases by the very high tension electricity generated by Ruhmkorff's induction coil - had become well known. Röntgen's work on cathode rays led him, however, to the discovery of a new and different kind of rays.
On the evening of November 8, 1895, he found that, if the discharge tube is enclosed in a sealed, thick black carton to exclude all light, and if he worked in a dark room, a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide placed in the path of the rays became fluorescent even when it was as far as two metres from the discharge tube. During subsequent experiments he found that objects of different thicknesses interposed in the path of the rays showed variable transparency to them when recorded on a photographic plate. When he immobilised for some moments the hand of his wife in the path of the rays over a photographic plate, he observed after development of the plate an image of his wife's hand which showed the shadows thrown by the bones of her hand and that of a ring she was wearing, surrounded by the penumbra of the flesh, which was more permeable to the rays and therefore threw a fainter shadow. This was the first "röntgenogram" ever taken. In further experiments, Röntgen showed that the new rays are produced by the impact of cathode rays on a material object. Because their nature was then unknown, he gave them the name X-rays. Later, Max von Laue and his pupils showed that they are of the same electromagnetic nature as light, but differ from it only in the higher frequency of their vibration.
Numerous honours were showered upon him. In several cities, streets were named after him, and a complete list of Prizes, Medals, honorary doctorates, honorary and corresponding memberships of learned societies in Germany as well as abroad, and other honours would fill a whole page of this book. In spite of all this, Röntgen retained the characteristic of a strikingly modest and reticent man. Throughout his life he retained his love of nature and outdoor occupations. Many vacations were spent at his summer home at Weilheim, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, where he entertained his friends and went on many expeditions into the mountains. He was a great mountaineer and more than once got into dangerous situations. Amiable and courteous by nature, he was always understanding the views and difficulties of others. He was always shy of having an assistant, and preferred to work alone. Much of the apparatus he used was built by himself with great ingenuity and experimental skill.
Röntgen married Anna Bertha Ludwig of Zürich, whom he had met in the café run by her father. She was a niece of the poet Otto Ludwig. They married in 1872 in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands. They had no children, but in 1887 adopted Josephine Bertha Ludwig, then aged 6, daughter of Mrs. Röntgen's only brother. Four years after his wife, Röntgen died at Munich on February 10, 1923, from carcinoma of the intestine.
Biography
Emil Adolf Behring was born on March 15, 1854 at Hansdorf, Deutsch-Eylau as the eldest son of the second marriage of a schoolmaster with a total of 13 children. Since the family could not afford to keep Emil at a University, he entered, in 1874, the well-known Army Medical College at Berlin. This made his studies financially practicable but also carried the obligation to stay in military service for several years after he had taken his medical degree (1878) and passed his State Examination (1880). He was then sent to Wohlau and Posen in Poland. Besides much practical work he found in Posen time to study (at the Chemical Department of the Experimental Station) problems connected with septic diseases. In the years 1881-1883 he carried out important investigations on the action of iodoform, stating that it does not kill microbes but may neutralize the poisons given off by them, thus being antitoxic. His first publications on these questions appeared in 1882. The governing body concerned with military health, which was especially interested in the prevention and combating of epidemics, being aware of the ability of Behring, sent him to the pharmacologist C. Binz at Bonn for further training in experimental methods. In 1888 they ordered him back to Berlin, where he worked-undoubtedly in full agreement with his own wishes - as an assistant at the Institute of Hygiene under Robert Koch. He remained there for several years after 1889, and followed Koch when the latter moved to the Institute for Infectious Diseases. This appointment brought him into close association, not only with Koch, but also with P. Ehrlich, who joined, in 1890, the brilliant team of workers Koch had gathered round him. In 1894 Behring became Professor of Hygiene at Halle, and the following year he moved to the corresponding chair at Marburg.Behring's most important researches were intimately bound up with the epoch-making work of Pasteur, Koch, Ehrlich, Löffler, Roux, Yersin and others, which led the foundation of our modern knowledge of the immunology of bacterial diseases; but he is, himself, chiefly remembered for his work on diphtheria and on tuberculosis. During the years 1888-1890 E. Roux and A. Yersin, working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, had shown that filtrates of diphtheria cultures which contained no bacilli, contained a substance which they called a toxin, that produced, when injected into animals, all the symptoms of diphtheria. In 1890, L. Brieger and C. Fraenkel prepared, from cultures of diphtheria bacilli, a toxic substance, which they called toxalbumin, which when injected in suitable doses into guinea-pigs, immunized these animals to diphtheria.
Starting from his observations on the action of iodoform, Behring tried to find whether a disinfection of the living organism might be obtained if animals were injected with material that had been treated with various disinfectants. Above all the experiments were performed with diphtheria and with tetanus bacilli. They led to the well-known development of a new kind of therapy for these two diseases. In 1890 Behring and S. Kitasato published their discovery that graduated doses of sterilised brothcultures of diphtheria or of tetanus bacilli caused the animals to produce, in their blood, substances which could neutralize the toxins which these bacilli produced (antitoxins). They also showed that the antitoxins thus produced by one animal could immunize another animal and that it could cure an animal actually showing symptoms of diphtheria. This great discovery was soon confirmed and successfully used by other workers.
Earlier in 1898, Behring and F. Wernicke had found that immunity to diphtheria could be produced by the injection into animals of diphtheria toxin neutralized by diphtheria antitoxin, and in 1907 Theobald Smith had suggested that such toxin-antitoxin mixtures might be used to immunize man against this disease. It was Behring, however, who announced, in 1913, his production of a mixture of this kind, and subsequent work which modified and refined the mixture originally produced by Behring resulted in the modern methods of immunization which have largely banished diphtheria from the scourges of mankind. Behring himself saw in his production of this toxin-antitoxin mixture the possibility of the final eradication of diphtheria; and he regarded this part of his efforts as the crowning success of his life's work.
From 1901 onwards Behring's health prevented him from giving regular lectures and he devoted himself chiefly to the study of tuberculosis. To facilitate his work a commercial firm in which he had a financial interest, built for him well-equipped laboratories at Marburg and in 1914 he himself founded, also in Marburg, the Behringwerke for the manufacture of sera and vaccines and for experimental work on these. His association with the production of sera and vaccines made him financially prosperous and he owned a large estate at Marburg, which was well stocked with cattle which he used for experimental purposes.
The great majority of Behring's numerous publications have been made easily available in the editions of his Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Collected Papers) in 1893 and 1915.
Numerous distinctions were conferred upon Behring. Already in 1893 the title of Professor was conferred upon him, and two years later he became «Geheimer Medizinalrat» and officer of the French Legion of Honour. In the ensuing years followed honorary membership of Societies in Italy, Turkey and France; in 1901, the year of his Nobel Prize, he was raised to the nobility, and in 1903 he was elected to the Privy Council with the title of Excellency. Later followed further honorary memberships in Hungary and Russia, as well as orders and medals from Germany, Turkey and Roumania. He also became an honorary freeman (Ehrenbürger) of Marburg.
In 1896 Behring married the 18 years old Else Spinola, daughter of the Director of the Charité at Berlin. They had seven children. Behring died at Marburg on March 31, 1917.
Biography
Rene Francois Armand Prudhomme (1839-1907) was the son of a French shopkeeper. He wanted to become an engineer, but an eye disease terminated his training at a polytechnic institute. He studied literature, and after a brief and unsuccessful interlude in industry, he took up law, though without much conviction, and worked in a solicitor's office. Sully Prudhomme was a member of the «Conference La Bruyère», a distinguished student society, and the favourable reception that his fellow members gave to his juvenilia encouraged him to go on writing poetry. His first volume, Stances et Poèmes (1865) [Stanzas and Poems], was well reviewed by Sainte-Beuve and established his reputation. Sully Prudhomme combined a Parnassian regard for formal perfection and elegance with philosophic and scientific interests, which are revealed, for instance, in his translation of the first book of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (1878-79). Some of his other poetic works are: Croquis Italiens (1866-68) [Italian Notebook]; Solitudes (1869); Impressions de la guerre (1870) [Impressions of War]; Les Destins (1872) [Destinies]; La Révolte des fleurs (1872) [Revolt of the Flowers ]; La France (1874); Les Vaines Tendresses (1875) [Vain Endearments]; La Justice (1878); and Le Bonheur (1888) [Happiness]. Les Epaves (1908) [Flotsam], published posthumously, was a collection of miscellaneous poems. A collected edition of his writings in five volumes appeared in 1900-01. He also wrote essays and a book on Pascal, La Vraie Religion selon Pascal (1905) [Pascal on true Religion]. Sully Prudhomme was a member of the French Academy from 1881 until his death in 1907.Biography
Jean Henri Dunant's life (May 8, 1828-October 30, 1910) is a study in contrasts. He was born into a wealthy home but died in a hospice; in middle age he juxtaposed great fame with total obscurity, and success in business with bankruptcy; in old age he was virtually exiled from the Genevan society of which he had once been an ornament and died in a lonely room, leaving a bitter testament. His passionate humanitarianism was the one constant in his life, and the Red Cross his living monument.The Geneva household into which Henri Dunant was born was religious, humanitarian, and civic-minded. In the first part of his life Dunant engaged quite seriously in religious activities and for a while in full-time work as a representative of the Young Men's Christian Association, traveling in France, Belgium, and Holland.
When he was twenty-six, Dunant entered the business world as a representative of the Compagnie genevoise des Colonies de Sétif in North Africa and Sicily. In 1858 he published his first book, Notice sur la Régence de Tunis [An Account of the Regency in Tunis], made up for the most part of travel observations but containing a remarkable chapter, a long one, which he published separately in 1863, entitled L'Esclavage chez les musulmans et aux États-Unis d'Amérique [Slavery among the Mohammedans and in the United States of America].
Having served his commercial apprenticeship, Dunant devised a daring financial scheme, making himself president of the Financial and Industrial Company of Mons-Gémila Mills in Algeria (eventually capitalized at 100,000,000 francs) to exploit a large tract of land. Needing water rights, he resolved to take his plea directly to Emperor Napoleon III. Undeterred by the fact that Napoleon was in the field directing the French armies who, with the Italians, were striving to drive the Austrians out of Italy, Dunant made his way to Napoleon's headquarters near the northern Italian town of Solferino. He arrived there in time to witness, and to participate in the aftermath of, one of the bloodiest battles of the nineteenth century. His awareness and conscience honed, he published in 1862 a small book Un Souvenir de Solférino [A Memory of Solferino], destined to make him famous.
A Memory has three themes. The first is that of the battle itself. The second depicts the battlefield after the fighting - its «chaotic disorder, despair unspeakable, and misery of every kind» - and tells the main story of the effort to care for the wounded in the small town of Castiglione. The third theme is a plan. The nations of the world should form relief societies to provide care for the wartime wounded; each society should be sponsored by a governing board composed of the nation's leading figures, should appeal to everyone to volunteer, should train these volunteers to aid the wounded on the battlefield and to care for them later until they recovered. On February 7, 1863, the Société genevoise d'utilité publique [Geneva Society for Public Welfare] appointed a committee of five, including Dunant, to examine the possibility of putting this plan into action. With its call for an international conference, this committee, in effect, founded the Red Cross. Dunant, pouring his money and time into the cause, traveled over most of Europe obtaining promises from governments to send representatives. The conference, held from October 26 to 29, with thirty-nine delegates from sixteen nations attending, approved some sweeping resolutions and laid the groundwork for a gathering of plenipotentiaries. On August 22, 1864, twelve nations signed an international treaty, commonly known as the Geneva Convention, agreeing to guarantee neutrality to sanitary personnel, to expedite supplies for their use, and to adopt a special identifying emblem - in virtually all instances a red cross on a field of white1.
Dunant had transformed a personal idea into an international treaty. But his work was not finished. He approved the efforts to extend the scope of the Red Cross to cover naval personnel in wartime, and in peacetime to alleviate the hardships caused by natural catastrophes. In 1866 he wrote a brochure called the Universal and International Society for the Revival of the Orient, setting forth a plan to create a neutral colony in Palestine. In 1867 he produced a plan for a publishing venture called an «International and Universal Library» to be composed of the great masterpieces of all time. In 1872 he convened a conference to establish the «Alliance universelle de l'ordre et de la civilisation» which was to consider the need for an international convention on the handling of prisoners of war and for the settling of international disputes by courts of arbitration rather than by war.
The eight years from 1867 to 1875 proved to be a sharp contrast to those of 1859-1867. In 1867 Dunant was bankrupt. The water rights had not been granted, the company had been mismanaged in North Africa, and Dunant himself had been concentrating his attention on humanitarian pursuits, not on business ventures. After the disaster, which involved many of his Geneva friends, Dunant was no longer welcome in Genevan society. Within a few years he was literally living at the level of the beggar. There were times, he says2, when he dined on a crust of bread, blackened his coat with ink, whitened his collar with chalk, slept out of doors.
For the next twenty years, from 1875 to 1895, Dunant disappeared into solitude. After brief stays in various places, he settled down in Heiden, a small Swiss village. Here a village teacher named Wilhelm Sonderegger found him in 1890 and informed the world that Dunant was alive, but the world took little note. Because he was ill, Dunant was moved in 1892 to the hospice at Heiden. And here, in Room 12, he spent the remaining eighteen years of his life. Not, however, as an unknown. After 1895 when he was once more rediscovered, the world heaped prizes and awards upon him.
Despite the prizes and the honors, Dunant did not move from Room 12. Upon his death, there was no funeral ceremony, no mourners, no cortege. In accordance with his wishes he was carried to his grave «like a dog»3.
Dunant had not spent any of the prize monies he had received. He bequeathed some legacies to those who had cared for him in the village hospital, endowed a «free bed» that was to be available to the sick among the poorest people in the village, and left the remainder to philanthropic enterprises in Norway and Switzerland.
