Viktor Meyer - Work

Work

Meyer stayed one year with Bunsen for an area wide analysis of spring water. Besides this he was also able to teach some Ph.D. students. In Berlin he joined the group of Adolf Baeyer, one of his best friends in later life, attacking among other problems that of the composition of camphor.

At the age of 23 on Baeyer's recommendation, Meyer was engaged by Fehling as his assistant at Stuttgart Polytechnic, but within a year he left to succeed Johannes Wislicenus at Zurich. There he remained for thirteen years, and it was during this period that he devised his well-known method for determining vapour densities, and carried out his experiments on the dissociation of the halogens. In 1882, on the death of Wilhelm Weith (1844-1881), professor of chemistry at Zurich University, he undertook to continue the lectures on benzene derivatives, and this led him to the discovery of thiophen. In 1885 he was chosen to succeed Hans Hübner (1837-1884) in the professorship of chemistry at Göttingen University, where stereo-chemical questions especially engaged his attention; and in 1889, on the resignation of his old master, Bunsen, he was appointed to the chair of chemistry in Heidelberg University. He died on the 8th of August 1897.