HOFMANN, AUGUST WIIMELM, F.R.S., a distinguished living chemist, b. at Giessen in 1818. After obtaining the degree of doctor of philosophy, he became assis tant to Liebig, in the Giessen laboratory, and subsequently he was appointed extra ordinary professor of chemistry in the university of Bonn. When the royal college of chemistry was established in London in 1845, Hofmann was recommended by Liebig as highly qualified for the important post of superintendent to the new institution. This college, which has since merged into the laboratory of the royal school of mines, owes much of its high character to his teaching and his scientific reputation. On the elevation of prof. Graham from the post of chemist to the mint to the office of master of that institution, Hofmann was appointed his successor. In 1865 Hofmann accepted an appointment to be professor of chemistry in the university of Berlin, with the com mission to found a chemical institute. He was a juror at all the international exhi bitions (London, 1851 and 1862; Paris, 1865 and 1867). In conjunction with Dr. Bence
Jones lie edited the later editions of Fownes's Manual of Chemistry. His numerous contributions to the Annalen der hernia and Plaarmacie, to the Transactions of the Chem ical Society, and to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, are for the most part on the very highest departments of organic chemistry; and in 1854 a royal medal was awarded to him for his Memoirs on the Molecular Constitution of the Organic Bases. It was in the course of these researches that he discovered in coal-naphtha aniline, the basis of the new colors mauve and magenta which had previously been only obtained from indigo. For his practical applications of this discovery, one of the great prizes was awarded to him at the Paris exhibition of 1807. Hofmann's Introduction to Modern Chemistry (1865; 5th•ed., 1871) has led togreat.ieforms:tu the tettchinefif chemistry.