life - a passionate love of nature in all its varying manifestations of beauty. Moreover, he emulated his grandfather in becoming a leader: Jeremiah Mason became an influential person (finally as United States Senator) while the grandson, though taking an entirely different path in life, likewise attained high rank among contemporaries in his own field.

When the boy outgrew the range of the Sullivan School, he entered the Boston Latin School, and there, as well as under the private tuition of Dr. Samuel Eliot, he completed the excellent training in mathematics with which he entered the then recently founded Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University in 1856. There he pursued the study of chemistry under Professor Horsford, and graduated with the degree of S.B. in 1858.

The following winter Crafts spent as a graduate student of engineering at Harvard, whence he went (at the age of twenty) to the Bergakademie at Freiberg in Saxony to continue the study of the science to which he was to devote his life work. In 1860 he migrated to the University of Heidelberg to study under Robert W. Bunsen, then and for many years afterwards director of the chemical laboratory there. Crafts's sojourn in the picturesque oldfashioned town in the valley of the Neckar must have been highly stimulating, for Bunsen (in collaboration with Kirchhoff) had just devised the spectroscope, and with it had discovered the previously unknown elements cæsium and rubidium. In the following year the young chemist left Germany for Paris, where he came under the influence of Wurtz, and for four years continued his studies at the École de Médicine. Ever afterwards his European interest centered in France rather than in Germany.

Returning to America in 1865 he became a mine examiner in Mexico during 1866-67 a task involving courage and resourcefulness as well as expert knowledge, since the country was alive with bandits and filled with difficulties. In the narration of his experience there his modesty prevented him from doing full justice to the inevitable adventures, which were often thrilling.

In the following autumn (1867) Crafts became professor of chemistry and dean of the chemical faculty at Cornell University, a position which he retained for three years. During this time he

gave occasional addresses as University Lecturer (1866-69) at Harvard. From Ithaca he was soon called to a professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as successor to Professor F. H. Storer. Perhaps partly because of excessive devotion to his congenial tasks, signs of an obscure weakness of the arterial system began to develop, from which, in varying degrees, he was to suffer the rest of his life. Complete change and rest were ordered, and in 1874 he turned again to Paris. Here in collaboration with Professor Charles Friedel, he discovered the important organic reaction which will always bear his name. After 1880, when he resigned even the non-resident professorship at the Massachusetts Institute, he spent most of the succeeding decade in France, and it was not until 1898 that he returned to America as a permanent abiding-place. Then once more he became connected with the Institute of Technology in Boston, conducting research there, and for several years filling the chairmanship of the chemical department and the professorship of organic chemistry. As a teacher he was inspiring and effective.

From October, 1897 to June, 1900 he was first acting president and then president of the Institute. Although deeply interested in this great technical school (which he rightly felt to be one of the important organizations of the kind in the world) and anxious to help to the extent of his ability, he again found limitations of health standing in the way. Therefore, after successfully guiding the institution over a difficult time of uncertainty, he resigned to the great regret of the Trustees and his colleagues. President Pritchett, his immediate successor, speaks with gratitude of the trouble and time which ex-President Crafts spent in initiating the new incumbent into the duties which had just changed hands. There is no question that administrative work was less to the chemist's taste, and therefore more wearing, than independent investigation in the laboratory. Returning with happiness to the study of new problems of organic and physical chemistry, he still worked in the old Walker Building of the Institute near Copley Square.

On June 13, 1868, he was married (while a young professor at Cornell) to Miss Clémence Haggerty of New York, who died in

1912. Her gayety of spirit, unselfishness, and courage helped greatly to carry him to high attainment through years of suffering and periods of discouragement. It was an unusually happy marriage, marked by sincere and lasting affection. Four daughters survive: Mrs. Russell S. Codman, Mrs. Gordon K. Bell, Miss Elizabeth Crafts, and Mrs. James T. Colburn.

Among his friends of the Saturday Club those still living all remember Crafts as delightful in conversation, although rather reserved and reticent. Like Isaac Newton he was chary of too large an acquaintance. His simplicity, sturdy honesty, clear intelligence, and freedom from pretence were highly appreciated by his intimates. To a keen sense of humor he added quick wit; he had also a happy knack for versification, but this last talent was reserved for family gatherings. History, literature, the drama, and all forms of art (except music, which he could not abide) were all absorbing and delightful pastimes to his versatile mind. His interest in the politics of the old world was keen, but his great affection was for his own country. An enthusiastic and rather adventurous traveller, he went even to Herzegovina and Bosnia in 1891, when tourists were practically unknown in those parts. Of course towards the end of his life such excursions were limited, and finally he divided his time between the Boston residence on Commonwealth Avenue and the beautiful country place at South Salem, New York (near Ridgefield, Connecticut), where he had a small laboratory well fitted for his researches, and where he enjoyed quiet and seclusion, always more to his taste than publicity or the whirl of city life.

As already suggested, his scientific work divides itself naturally into two groups of researches: those in organic and those in physical chemistry. A summary of the details would be out of place in this volume, because of their somewhat recondite nature.' The biography, however, would not be complete without renewed emphasis upon the importance of his discovery of the method of organic synthesis by means of aluminum chloride (the Friedel-Crafts

1 More complete reports of Professor Crafts's scientific work are to be found in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 9, p. 159, and in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 53, p. 801. The former gives a complete bibliography of his publications.