Johann Jacob Berzelius was the son of the schoolmaster of Wäfersunda, a village near Linköping, in East Gothland, Sweden. He was born in August 1779—he was born, that is, a few years after Priestley's discovery of oxygen; at the time when Lavoisier had nearly completed his theory of combustion; when Dalton was endeavouring to keep the unruly youth of Eaglesfield in subjection; and when Black, having established the existence of fixed air and the theory of latent heat, was the central figure in the band of students who were enlarging our knowledge of Nature in the Scottish capital.
Being left an orphan at the age of nine, the young Berzelius was brought up by his grandfather, who appears to have been a man of education and sense. After attending school at Linköping, he entered the University of Upsala as a student of medicine. Here he soon began to show a taste for chemistry. It would appear that few or no experiments were then introduced into his lectures by the Professor of Chemistry at Upsala; little encouragement was given to pursue chemical experiments, and so Berzelius had to trust to his own labours for gaining an acquaintance with practical chemistry. Having thus made considerable progress in chemistry, and being on a visit to the mineral baths of Medevi, he seized the opportunity to make a very thorough analysis of the waters of this place, which were renowned in Sweden for their curative properties. The publication of this analysis marks the first appearance of Berzelius as an author.
He graduated as M.B. in 1801, and a year or two later presented his dissertation, entitled "The Action of Galvanism on Organic Bodies," as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. This thesis, like that of Black, published about half a century earlier, marks an important stage in the history of chemistry. These and other publications made the young doctor famous; he was called to Stockholm to be extraordinary (or assistant) Professor of Chemistry in the medical school of that capital.
Sometimes practising medicine in order to add to his limited income, but for the most part engaged in chemical research, he remained in Stockholm for nearly fifty years, during most of which time the laboratory of Berzelius in the Swedish capital was regarded as one of the magnetic poles of the chemical world. To this point came many of the great chemists who afterwards enriched the science by their discoveries. Wöhler, H. and G. Rose, Magnus, Gmelin, Mitscherlich and others all studied with Berzelius. He visited England and France, and was on terms of intimacy and in correspondence with Davy, Dalton, Gay-Lussac, Berthollet and the other men who at that period shed so much lustre on English and French science.
It is said that Berzelius was so much pleased with the lectures of Dr. Marcet at Guy's Hospital, that on his return from his visit to England in 1812, he introduced much more liveliness and many more experimental illustrations into his own lectures.
At the age of thirty-one, Berzelius was chosen President of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences; a few years later he was elected a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society, which society bestowed on him the Copley Medal in 1836. He was raised to the rank of a baron by the King of Sweden, being allowed as a special privilege to retain his own name.
In the year 1832 Berzelius resigned his professorship, and in the same year he married. During the remainder of his life, he continued to receive honours of all kinds, but he never for a moment forsook the paths of science. After the death of Davy, in 1829, he was recognized as the leading European chemist of his age; but, although firm in his own theoretical views, he was ready to test these views by appealing to Nature. The very persistency with which he clung to a conception established on some solid experimental basis insured that new light would be thrown on that conception by the researches of those chemists who opposed him.
Probably no chemist has added to the science so many carefully determined facts as Berzelius; he was always at work in the laboratory, and always worked with the greatest care. Yet the appliances at his command were what we should now call poor, meagre, and utterly inadequate. Professor Wöhler of Göttingen, who in the fulness of days and honours has so lately gone from amongst us, recently gave an account of his visit to Berzelius in the year 1823. Wöhler had taken his degree as Doctor of Medicine at Heidelberg, and being anxious to prosecute the study of chemistry he was advised by his friends to spend a winter in the laboratory of the Swedish professor. Having written to Berzelius and learned that he was willing to allow him working room in his laboratory, the young student set out for Stockholm. After a journey to Lübeck and a few days' passage in a small sailing-vessel, he arrived in the Swedish capital.
Knocking at the door of the house pointed out as that of Berzelius, he tells us that his heart beat hard as the door was opened by a tall man of florid complexion. "It was Berzelius himself," he exclaims. Scarcely believing that he was in the very room where so many famous discoveries had been made, he entered the laboratory. No water, no gas, no draught-places, no ovens were to be seen; a couple of plain tables, a blowpipe, a few shelves with bottles, a little simple apparatus, and a large water-barrel whereat Anna, the ancient cook of the establishment, washed the laboratory dishes, completed the furnishings of this room, famous throughout Europe for the work which had been done in it. In the kitchen which adjoined, and where Anna cooked, was a small furnace and a sand bath for heating purposes.