Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/451

 743). As a consequence of the destruction of his cathedral, Anian thought of removing the see to Rhuddlan, and Edward promised to grant a site and contribute a thousand marks (Fœdera, i. 629). The scheme, however, fell through. With the abbot of Shrewsbury Anian had a successful suit as to the patronage of Whitminster. He died on 5 Feb. 1293, and his will was proved on 1 May following. In the ‘Liber de Hergest’ Anian is called ‘Y brawd du o Nanney’ or ‘the black friar of Nanney,’ and is described as the stoutest defender of the privileges of his see. Bale ascribes to him a commentary ‘in Fabulas Poetarum,’ of which he says there was a copy at Glastonbury.



SCHORLEMMER, CARL (1834–1892), chemist, was born on 30 Sept. 1834 at Darmstadt. He was the eldest son of Johannes Schorlemmer, a master-carpenter, and his wife, whose maiden name was Roth. He went first to the elementary school, and then to the ‘Realschule,’ and from sixteen to nineteen, owing to the influence of his mother, but much against his father's inclination, to the ‘Höhere Gewerbeschule,’ in Darmstadt, where he learnt elementary science. His father then forced him to abandon his idea of following a profession; and at Easter 1854, probably at the suggestion of his friend, William Dittmar (1833–1892) (see obituary in Nature, xlv. 493, by A. C[rum] B[rown]), he became the pupil of an apothecary named Lindenborn at Gross-Umstadt. After two and a half years, during which he employed his leisure in acquiring an extensive practical knowledge of botany, he obtained his diploma as pharmaceutical assistant, and went in that capacity to an apothecary named Odenwald at Heidelberg. Here he attended the lectures of the great chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, which led him to adopt chemistry as a profession. He gave up his business in May 1859 and entered the university of Giessen, where he studied in the laboratory of Heinrich Will (1812–1890) and under Hermann Kopp (1817–1892), from whom he derived his interest in the history of chemistry. In the autumn of 1859 he replaced Dittmar as the private assistant of Professor (now Sir) Henry Enfield Roscoe at the Owens College, Manchester, and remained connected with the college till his death. In March 1861 he was appointed (again to replace Dittmar) as assistant in the college laboratory, in 1873 he was made lecturer, and in 1874 professor of organic chemistry, the chair being the first created for this subject in England. He was naturalised 20 May 1879.

After helping Roscoe in his research on the distillation of dilute acids, he began in 1861 his first original investigation, on a sample of the light oils from cannel coal-tar sent to the college by Mr. John Barrow of Gorton (Transactions of the Chemical Society, 1862, p. 419). This determined the greater part of his life work. Some erroneous observations of the chemist, Professor Edward Frankland, had led to the general belief that certain important hydrocarbons, now known as the normal paraffins, were capable of existing in two isomeric forms, as ‘alcohol radicles,’ and as ‘hydrides of the alcohol radicles.’ By a long and patient examination of normal paraffins occurring in coal-tar, in natural petroleums, and produced synthetically, Schorlemmer showed that these substances form a single and not a double series. August Kekulé (1829–1896) and A. S. Couper had, in 1858, started the theory that in organic compounds each carbon atom is ‘tetravalent,’ but Schorlemmer's observations were essential to the development of the theory, according to which the four ‘valencies’ are equivalent. This hypothesis has proved a most powerful engine of research, and is now regarded as the fundamental conception of modern organic chemistry. Schorlemmer was also author of an important memoir ‘On the Classification and Structure of the Paraffin Hydrocarbons’ (Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1868, xvi. 367). In the course of his work on the paraffins, Schorlemmer prepared a considerable number of new substances, among them normal pentane, normal heptane, and diisopropyl. He also investigated the action of chlorine on the paraffins, and described a valuable general method for the conversion of secondary alcohols into the corresponding primary compounds. Besides interesting speculations on the vexed question of the constitution of bleaching powder, he published, with his friend, Richard S. Dale, a valuable series of observations on aurin and on suberone.

But Schorlemmer's literary work gradually took him from the laboratory, and absorbed all his time from 1883 onwards. In 1867 he translated Roscoe's ‘Elementary Lessons on Chemistry’ into German, and in 1870 Roscoe's ‘Spectrum Analysis.’ In 1871 he published independently his ‘Lehrbuch der Kohlenstoffverbindungen,’ of which a trans-