The New International Encyclopædia/Genth, Frederick Augustus

GENTH, gĕnt, Frederick Augustus (1820-93). An American analytical chemist and mineralogist, born at Wächtersbach, Hesse. He was educated at Heidelberg, at Giessen under Liebig, and at Marburg under Gerling in physics, and in chemistry under Bunsen, whose assistant he was from 1845 to 1848, when he went to Philadelphia and set up an analytical laboratory. In 1872 he was appointed to the chair of chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, but resigned in 1888, and again opened his laboratory. He established twenty-three new minerals; wrote one hundred and two articles, mostly on chemistry and mineralogy; and was best known for his Researches on the Ammonia-Cobalt Bases, with Wolcott Gibbs (1856); for his studies of “Corundum” (in American Philosophical Society Proceedings, 1873); for his reports, as chemist and mineralogist to the Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, on the mineralogy of the State; and for his analyses for the State Board of Agriculture. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society (1854-93), one of the founders of the American Chemical Society, and its president in 1880, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Boston Academy of Arts and Sciences.