teach. Constant study then began to tell on his health, and in 1682, leaving his already numerous pupils, he proceeded to Minden in Westphalia to recruit himself, at the request of a relative who held a high position in that town. After practising at Minden for two years, Hoffmann made a journey to Holland and England, where he formed the acquaintance of many illustrious chemists and physicians. Towards the end of 1684 he returned to Minden, and during the next three years he received many flattering appointments. In 1688 he removed to the more promising sphere of Halberstadt, with the title of physician to the principality of Halberstadt; and on the founding of Halle university in 1693, his reputation, which had been steadily increasing, procured for him the primarius chair of medicine, while at the same time he was charged with the responsible duty of framing the statutes for the new medical faculty. He filled also the chair of natural philosophy. With the exception of four years (1708–1712), which he passed at Berlin in the capacity of royal physician, Hoffmann spent the rest of his life at Halle in instruction, practice and study, interrupted now and again by visits to different courts of Germany, where his services procured him honours and rewards. His fame became European. He was enrolled a member of many learned societies in different foreign countries, while in his own he became privy councillor. He died at Halle on the 12th of November 1742.
Of his numerous writings a catalogue is to be found in Haller’s Bibliotheca medicinae practicae. The chief is Medicina rationalis systematica, undertaken at the age of sixty, and published in 1730. It was translated into French in 1739, under the title of Médecine raisonnée d’Hoffmann. A complete edition of Hoffmann’s works, with a life of the author, was published at Geneva in 1740, to which supplements were added in 1753 and 1760. Editions appeared also at Venice in 1745 and at Naples in 1753 and 1793. (See also Medicine.)
HOFFMANN, JOHANN JOSEPH (1805–1878), German
scholar, was born at Würzburg on the 16th of February 1805.
After studying at Würzburg he went on the stage in 1825; but
owing to an accidental meeting with the German traveller,
Dr Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866), in July 1830, his
interest was diverted to Oriental philology. From Siebold
he acquired the rudiments of Japanese, and in order to take
advantage of the instructions of Ko-ching-chang, a Chinese
teacher whom Siebold had brought home with him, he made
himself acquainted with Malay, the only language except
Chinese which the Chinaman could understand. In a few years
he was able to supply the translations for Siebold’s Nippon;
and the high character of his work soon attracted the attention
of older scholars. Stanislas Julien invited him to Paris; and
he would probably have accepted the invitation, as a disagreement
had broken out between him and Siebold, had not M.
Baud, the Dutch colonial minister, appointed him Japanese
translator with a salary of 1800 florins (£150). The Dutch
authorities were slow in giving him further recognition; and
he was too modest a man successfully to urge his claims. It
was not till after he had received the offer of the professorship
of Chinese in King’s College, London, that the authorities made
him professor at Leiden and the king allowed him a yearly
pension. In 1875 he was decorated with the order of the
Netherlands Lion, and in 1877 he was elected corresponding
member of the Berlin Academy. He died at the Hague on the
23rd of January 1878.
Hoffmann’s chief work was his unfinished Japanese Dictionary, begun in 1839 and afterwards continued by L. Serrurier. Unable at first to procure the necessary type, he set himself to the cutting of punches, and even when the proper founts were obtained he had to act as his own compositor as far as Chinese and Japanese were concerned. His Japanese grammar (Japanische Sprachlehre) was published in Dutch and English in 1867, and in English and German in 1876. Of his miscellaneous productions it is enough to mention “Japans Bezüge mit der koraischen Halbinsel und mit Schina” in Nippon, vii.; Yo-San-fi-Rok, L’Art d’élever les vers à soie au Japon, par Ouckaki Mourikouni (Paris, 1848); “Die Heilkunde in Japan” in Mittheil. d. deutsch. Gesellsch. für Natur- und Völkerk. Ost-Asiens (1873–1874); and Japanische Studien (1878).
HOFMANN, AUGUST WILHELM VON (1818–1892), German
chemist, was born at Giessen on the 8th of April 1818. Not
intending originally to devote himself to physical science, he
first took up the study of law and philology at Göttingen, and
the general culture he thus gained stood him in good stead
when he turned to chemistry, the study of which he began under
Liebig. When, in 1845, a school of practical chemistry was
started in London, under the style of the Royal College of
Chemistry, Hofmann, largely through the influence of the Prince
Consort, was appointed its first director. It was with some
natural hesitation that he, then a Privatdozent at Bonn, accepted
the position, which may well have seemed rather a precarious
one; but the difficulty was removed by his appointment as
extraordinary professor at Bonn, with leave of absence for two
years, so that he could resume his career in Germany if his
English one proved unsatisfactory. Fortunately the college
was more or less successful, owing largely to his enthusiasm
and energy, and many of the men who were trained there subsequently
made their mark in chemical history. But in 1864
he returned to Bonn, and in the succeeding year he was selected
to succeed E. Mitscherlich as professor of chemistry and director
of the laboratory in Berlin University. In leaving England,
of which he used to speak as his adopted country, Hofmann
was probably influenced by a combination of causes. The public
support extended to the college of chemistry had been dwindling
for some years, and before he left it had ceased to have an
independent existence and had been absorbed into the School
of Mines. This event he must have looked upon as a curtailment
of its possibilities of usefulness. But, in addition, there is only
too much reason to suppose that he was disappointed at the
general apathy with which his science was regarded in England.
No man ever realized more fully than he how entirely dependent
on the advance of scientific knowledge is the continuation of a
country’s material prosperity, and no single chemist ever
exercised a greater or more direct influence upon industrial
development. In England, however, people cared for none
of these things, and were blind to the commercial potentialities
of scientific research. The college to which Hofmann devoted
nearly twenty of the best years of his life was starved; the coal-tar
industry, which was really brought into existence by his
work and that of his pupils under his direction at that college,
and which with a little intelligent forethought might have been
retained in England, was allowed to slip into the hands of
Germany, where it is now worth millions of pounds annually;
and Hofmann himself was compelled to return to his native
land to find due appreciation as one of the foremost chemists
of his time. The rest of his life was spent in Berlin, and there
he died on the 5th of May 1892. That city possesses a permanent
memorial to his name in Hofmann House, the home of the
German Chemical Society (of which he was the founder), which
was formally opened in 1900, appropriately enough with an
account of that great triumph of German chemical enterprise,
the industrial manufacture of synthetical indigo.
Hofmann’s work covered a wide range of organic chemistry, though with inorganic bodies he did but little. His first research, carried out in Liebig’s laboratory at Giessen, was on coal-tar, and his investigation of the organic bases in coal-gas naphtha established the nature of aniline. This substance he used to refer to as his first love, and it was a love to which he remained faithful throughout his life. His perception of the analogy between it and ammonia led to his famous work on the amines and ammonium bases and the allied organic phosphorus compounds, while his researches on rosaniline, which he first prepared in 1858, formed the first of a series of investigations on colouring matters which only ended with quinoline red in 1887. But in addition to these and numberless other investigations for which he was responsible the influence he exercised through his pupils must also be taken into account. As a teacher, besides the power of accurately gauging the character and capabilities of those who studied under him, he had the faculty of infecting them with his own enthusiasm, and thus of stimulating them to put forward their best efforts. In the lecture-room he laid great stress on the importance of experimental demonstrations, paying particular attention to their selection and arrangement, though, since he
