CIAMICIAN, GIACOMO LUIGI Italian chemist, was born at Trieste on Aug. 22, 1857; his father was of American origin. He was educated at Trieste and Vienna but took his doctorate in 188o at the University of Giessen. He became assistant and later reader in the institute of general chemistry of the University of Rome. In 1887 he was appointed professor of general chemistry in the University of Padua and in 1889 accepted the chair of chemistry at the University of Bologna, retaining this appointment until his death on Jan. 2, 1922.
Ciamician was a great teacher as well as a great investigator in chemistry, his researches in this science were very wide, the most important being in organic chemistry. He stressed its ap plication to biological chemistry rather than the discovery of new compounds. An investigation on the compounds in animal tar led him, early in his career, to the important researches on pyrrole. Dr. Silber of Rome and others assisted Ciamician with some of this work and about 8o papers were published between 188o and 1900. A monograph Il Pirralo e i suoi Derivati (1888 ) gained the royal prize of the Accademia dei Lincei ; the work is summarized in a paper "on the development of the chemistry of pyrrole in the last quarter of a century" read to the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft in 1904.
Ciamician was also a pioneer in the chemistry of vegetable products, at first he worked on organic compounds of vegetable origin and published a number of papers on this subject ; the essential oil of celery was the subject of an important investiga tion. Later he became interested in the chemistry of the sub stances in the living plant and their biological significance ; he inoculated plants and seeds with alkaloids and with their constit uents. The work was summarized in an address to the Italian Association for the Advancement of Science in 1921.
His researches on the chemical action of light, many of them carried out in conjunction with Dr. Silber, are noteworthy. Some of the photochemical actions observed are important but the work is very complex and the results are not always definite.
In addition there are a number of investigations by Ciamician on physical chemistry, some of his earliest work was on the spectra of homologous elements ; later researches were on theory of electrolytic dissociation, on the nature of chemical affinity and on the valency of atoms.
From 1910 onwards Ciamician was a member of the Italian senate, where he was interested mainly in matters relating to education and chemical industry. He was a member of prac tically all the Italian scientific societies and an honorary mem ber of the chemical societies of America, England, France and Germany. A new chemical institute which will bear his name is to be erected at Bologna to commemorate his work.