66. Viktor Meyer

Dr. Viktor Meyer, one of the most important chemists of our time, from whom science still expected much, ended his life on August 8. The news is shocking, because everything that has recently become known about the outstanding researcher suggests that he was working with all his might towards the goal that he often declared to be the next frontier of contemporary chemistry: the decomposition of substances that are now known as elements into simpler materials. With admirable energy and a great sense of purpose, he devised experimental methods to solve the task he had set himself. How natural bodies are composed and what their simple components are: these questions preoccupied him. He wanted to solve them by conducting laboratory experiments under the most difficult conditions. The complicated way in which simple bodies form the compounds that organic chemistry has to deal with appealed to his spirit of research. The fact that he discovered new substances, aldoximes and thiophene, appears to be a side effect of his research. This research itself aimed to fathom the constitution of matter by experimental means. It is deeply regrettable that he felt compelled to discontinue his beautiful work. There is much to do in the field that he has made his own.