Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Genth, Frederick Augustus L. C. W.

GENTH, Frederick Augustus L. C. W., chemist, b. in Waechtersbach, Hesse-Cassel, 17 May, 1820; d. in Philadelphia, Pa., 2 Feb., 1893. He studied at the Hanau gymnasium and at the University of Heidelberg, under Liebig at Giessen, and finally under Bunsen at Marburg, where he received the degree of Ph. D. in 1846. For three years he acted as assistant to Prof. Bunsen, and soon afterward came to the United States, where he continued to reside. In 1872 he was called to the chair of chemistry and mineralogy in the University of Pennsylvania. He has also held the office of chemist to the geological survey of Pennsylvania and also to the board of agriculture of that state. Prof. Genth was a member of many scientific societies in the United States, and was elected in 1872 to membership in the National academy of sciences. Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Jr., alluded to Genth as having “no superior in this country as an analytical chemist,” and he has greatly enriched the literature of chemistry with his very many and careful analyses of minerals. His name is associated with the ammonia cobalt bases which he discovered in 1846, and, in joint authorship with Dr. Wolcott Gibbs, he has contributed to the “Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge” a monograph on “Researches on the Ammonia-Cobalt Bases” (Washington, 1856). Prof. Genth is the author of nearly 100 separate papers on subjects in chemistry and mineralogy, and has published “Tabellarische Übersicht der wichtigsten Reactionen welche Basen in Salzen zeigen” (Marburg, 1845), also the same in relation to “Acids” (1845); “Minerals of North Carolina,” being appendix “C” of the “Report on the Geology of North Carolina” (Raleigh, 1875); also “First and Second Preliminary Reports on the Mineralogy of Pennsylvania” (Harrisburg, 1875-'6), and “Minerals and Mineral Localities of North Carolina” (Raleigh, 1881).