Abstract
THROUGH the death, on March 12, of Ame Pictet, Swiss chemists have lost their doyen, and organic chemistry one of its foremost investigators. Descended from a family of bankers, Pictet was born at Geneva on July 12, 1857, and in 1876 he entered the local university. In deciding to devote himself to scientific investigation, he followed a Swiss patrician tradition which has given us, to name but a few, De Saussure the physicist and De Candolle the botanist, both citizens of Geneva, the Bernouilli brothers and the two cousins Sarasin, respectively mathematicians and oceanographers of Basle. After some years of study at Geneva under Marignac, Pictet migrated to Dresden, then to Bonn, where he attended Kekule's lectures and wrote a doctor's dissertation on the esters of tartaric acid, under the direction of Anschutz. After further study in Paris, he returned to Geneva and became in 1882 Privatdozent, in 1894 extraordinary professor of organic chemistry, in 1897 ordinary professor of biological and pharmaceutical chemistry, and ultimately professor of inorganic chemistry.
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B., G. Prof. A. Pictet. Nature 139, 661 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139661a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139661a0