Friedrich August Raschig

RASCHIG, FRIEDRICH AUGUST Ger man chemist, was born at Brandenburg on June 8, 1863. He studied at Berlin and Heidelberg, and became assistant in the chemical laboratories at the University of Berlin (1885-87). He became chemist to the Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik in 1887, and in 1891 started a factory for the manufacture of phenol. He carried out researches on the reactions involved in the lead chamber process of producing sulphuric acid. Raschig discovered a technical method of preparing hydroxylamine, and his researches on chloramine led to his well known process for the manufacture of hydrazine. He was an authority on the distillation of coal tar and the manufacture of synthetic phenol. He died on Feb. 4, 1928.

RASHI

Jewish scholar. RABBI SOLOMON IZHAQI (son of Isaac), usually cited as Rashi from the initials of those words, was born at Troyes in 1040 and died in the same town in 1105. He seems to have passed the decade beginning with 1055 in Worms, where a niche in a wall, where his mother was miracu lously saved from death was long shown. Within this, it is said, Rashi was wont to teach. A small edifice on the east of the syna gogue is called the "Rashi Chapel," and the "Rashi Chair," raised on three steps in the niche, is one of the objects of the pious admiration of pilgrims. At Worms Rashi worked under Jacob ben Yaqar, and at Mainz under Isaac ben Judah, perhaps com bining at the same time the functions of teacher and student.

Rashi was twenty-five years of age when he returned to Troyes, which became a recognized centre of Jewish learning. Here he

acted as rabbi and judge ; he and his family worked in the vines of Troyes. His learning and character raised him to a position of high respect among the Jewries of Europe, though Spain and the East were long outside the range of his influence. As was said of him soon after his death: "His lips were the seat of wisdom, and thanks to him the Law, which he examined and interpreted, has come to life again." The latter part of his life was saddened by the massacres in the Rhineland at the time of the first Crusade. Rashi died in Troyes in 1105.

Besides minor works, such as a recension of the Prayer-Book (Siddur), the Pardes and ha-Orah, Rashi wrote two great com mentaries on the whole of the Hebrew Bible and on about thirty treatises of the Talmud. His commentary on the Pentateuch, in particular, has been printed in hundreds of editions; it is still to Jews the most beloved of all commentaries on the Mosaic books. More than a hundred supercommentaries have been writ ten on it. His influence in Christian circles was great, especially because of the use made of the commentary by Nicolaus de Lyra (q.v.), who in his turn was one of the main sources of Luther's version. Even more important was his commentary on the Talmud, which became so much the definitive interpretation that Rashi is cited simply as "the Commentator."