HOMBERG, WILHELM Dutch natural philo sopher, was born at Batavia (Java) on Jan. 8, 165 2. He went to Europe in 167o, to study law at Jena and Leipzig, and in 1674 he became an advocate at Magdeburg. In that town he made the acquaintance of Otto von Guericke. He graduated in medicine at Wittenberg and settled in Paris in 1682. From 1685 to 1690 he practised as a physician at Rome; returning to Paris in 1691, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and appointed director of its chemical laboratory. Subsequently he became teacher of physics and chemistry (1702), and private physician to the duke of Orleans. He died at Paris on Sept. 24. 1715. Homberg was not free from alchemistical tendencies, but he made many solid contributions to chemical and physical knowl edge, recording observations on the green colour produced in flames by copper, on the crystallization of common salt, on the salts of plants, on the saturation of bases by acids, on the freez ing of water and its evaporation in vacus, etc. Much of his work was published in the Recueil de l'Academie des Sciences from 1692 to 1714. The Sal Sedativum Hombergi is boracic acid, which he discovered in 1702, and "Homberg's phosphorus" (fused cal cium chloride) is prepared by heating sal-ammoniac with quick lime.