Mitscherlich, EILHARD

Mitscherlich, EILHARD, chemist, was born at Nenende, near Jever in Oldenburg, Germany, on 7th January 1794, and died at Schöneberg near Berlin on 28th August 1863. At the university of Heidelberg (1811-13) he devoted himself to philology, especially to Persian. At this time of his life his ambition was to go to Persia, and for this end he visited Paris and began to study medicine in Göttingen after 1814. But whilst studying medicine, his deepest interest was arrested by the sciences of geology and mineralogy, chemistry and physics. Work in the Berlin laboratory in 1819 led him to discover the law of Isomorphism (q.v.). Berzelius invited the young chemist to Stockholm (1820), from which city he returned (1822) to fill the chair of Chemistry at Berlin. One of his earliest discoveries after his appointment was that of the double crystalline form of sulphur, one of the first observed cases of Dimorphism (q.v.). His investigations regarding the production of artificial minerals, and his memoirs on benzene and the formation of ether, must also be noted. His principal work is Lehrbuch der Chemie (2 vols. 1829-35; 4th ed. 1840-48; 5th begun in 1855, but not completed). See Memoir by Rose (Berlin, 1864).