University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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THE 1909 INDEX VOLUME XXXIX Charles Anthony Goessmann T WAS June thirteenth, eighteen hundred and twenty-seven. Europe was in the midst of a period of keenest intellectual activity. The social, commercial, and scientific world was rapidly evolving new ways of thinking and living. The National Guard of France was disbanded in this year, Germany having driven Napoleon, the Scourge of Europe, from her borders fourteen years before. In this year Pestalozzi died, after bringing universal reform into the methods of teaching youth. Liebig, in the little town of Giessen, in 1824, had established, against strong opposition, the laboratory method of teaching. In dear old Gottingen, Friedrich Wohler had proven the nonexistence of that ignis fatuus of centuries of fruitless study and research, the force of life. And this discovery alone, published in 1828, served to turn the entire world of thought into new channels. These were stirring times, and this was a noble year in which to be born. One born in this year the Germans might well designate as woblgeboren. And so, in Naumburg in Hesse-Cassel, on the above-named day, was Karl Anton Goessmann woblgeboren. The story of his life should become familiar to every M. A. C. man, even to the newest. In this small space, however, merely the main facts may be presented, and even the} ' only in the most compressed form. After taking a high school course (German gymnasium) at Fritzlar, he went to study with Friedr ich Wohler in Gottingen. On graduating as Doctor of Philos- ophy there in 1853, he served as privat dozent, and was promoted to be professor extraordinarius.

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MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE After an extended trip through Europe, in 1857 he came to America and was respectively chemist and manager of the Eastwick Sugar Refinery in Philadelphia, chemist to the Onondaga Salt Company in Syracuse, and Professor of Chemistry in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy. Since 1867 he has been Professor of Chemistry in this college, and since 1877 chemist, director, and honorary director of the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station. To his many other posi- tions and commissions and the reports and papers written by him, only this reference can now be made. It seems appropriate here to mention other features of his career which, perhaps, appeal in a more general way to our college circle. Fortunately, steady habits and a systematic life have laid the foundation for a vigorous continuation of the years of study and of counsel which he now, as ever, generously and graciously offers to all. His past with its fullness is ours, but it is incumbent on all who claim to be students, to make sure that we read not only the significance of what has been, but also the significance . of what is now and ot what is to be, in this continued association. Many of us, even yet, fail to realize what our relationship to Professor Goess- mann really means. It means that through him M. A. C. men are brought into intimate association with the lives and the work of the great achievers in science of the nineteenth century. When we consider that his lectures and talks and social intercourse bring us closely into the companionship of the builders of scientific agri- culture as it is today, we cannot fail to be thrilled and aroused. The intimacy of Goessmann and Wohler has been referred to. Wohler we may look upon as a center of influence from which radiated the light of experimental knowledge, especially in chemistry and agriculture, during the last seventy-five years It was in Berzelius ' s laboratory in Sweden that Wohler, as a boy, found the inspiration which he transmitted to many a worker in the field of science. For forty- four years Wohler and Liebig, on terms of intimate friendship, carried on a correspond- ence which covers seven hundred and fifty printed pages. Another group of these men, or rather sub-group, made up of American cotemporaries of Professor Goessmann in Gottingen, is especially interesting to us. It included Professors Joy and Chandler of Columbia University, Caldwell of Cornell, Mallett of the University of Virginia, and our own President Clark. These all, by