Abstract
FROM the time of the founding of the University at Prague in 1347 by Charles IV, Bohemia has been an important centre of learning. Komenske, Purkyne and Mendel all attained fame beyond the frontiers of their country, but the first Czech chemist to gain world-wide recognition was Prof. Bohuslav Brauner, who died on February 14 of this year. He had been a student at Manchester under Sir Henry Roscoe in the ‘eighties, and whilst in England began some of his famous researches on the rare earths. He came to acquire an international reputation also by his advocacy of MendeleefFs Periodic Law, to the substantiation of which he directed his investigations, especially his redeterminations of atomic weights. He was elected an honorary and foreign fellow of the Chemical Society soon after the Great War, and the Society's Brauner Memorial Lecture was delivered by Dr. S. I. Levy on November 14. Dr. Levy has himself contributed to our knowledge of the rare earth elements and he was able to give a very lucid account of the way in which these very similar and difficultly separable bodies were isolated and identified as pure substances. Brauner's share in this work was very great, and is all the more noteworthy since it was very largely performed in adverse circumstances, for it was not until 1903 that the chemical institute of the Charles University of Prague was erected, largely as a result of Brauner's insistent pleas.
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Brauner Memorial Lecture. Nature 136, 826–827 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136826c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136826c0