LIE, MARIUS SOPHUS (1842-1899), Norwegian mathematician, was born at Nordfjordeif, near Bergen, on the 17th of December 1842, and was educated at the university of Christiania, where he took his doctor’s degree in 1868 and became extraordinary professor of mathematics (a chair created specially for him) four years later. In 1886 he was chosen to succeed Felix Klein in the chair of geometry at Leipzig, but as his fame grew a special post was arranged for him in Christiania. But his health was broken down by too assiduous study, and he died at Christiania on the 18th of February 1899, six months after his return. Lie’s work exercised a great influence on the progress of mathematical science during the later decades of the 19th century. His primary aim has been declared to be the advancement and elaboration of the theory of differential equations, and it was with this end in view that he developed his theory of transformation groups, set forth in his Theorie der Transformationsgruppen (3 vols., Leipzig, 1888-1893), a work of wide range and great originality, by which probably his name is best known. A special application of his theory of continuous groups was to the general problem of non-Euclidean geometry. The latter part of the book above mentioned was devoted to a study of the foundations of geometry, considered from the standpoint of B. Riemann and H. von Helmholtz; and he intended to publish a systematic exposition of his geometrical investigations, in conjunction with Dr G. Scheffers, but only one volume made its appearance (Geometrie der Berührungstransformationen, Leipzig, 1896). Lie was a foreign member of the Royal Society, as well as an honorary member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and the London Mathematical Society, and his geometrical inquiries gained him the much-coveted honour of the Lobatchewsky prize.
An analysis of Lie’s works is given in the Bibliotheca Mathematica (Leipzig, 1900).
LIEBER, FRANCIS (1800-1872), German-American publicist, was born at Berlin on the 18th of March 1800. He served with his two brothers under Blücher in the campaign of 1815, fighting at Ligny, Waterloo and Namur, where he was twice dangerously wounded. Shortly afterwards he was arrested for his political sentiments, the chief evidence against him being several songs of liberty which he had written. After several months he was discharged without a trial, but was forbidden to pursue his studies at the Prussian universities. He accordingly went to Jena, where he took his degrees in 1820, continuing his studies at Halle and Dresden. He subsequently took part in the Greek War of Independence, publishing his experiences in his Journal in Greece (Leipzig, 1823, and under the title The German Anacharsis, Amsterdam, 1823). For a year he was in Rome as tutor to the son of the historian Niebuhr, then Prussian ambassador. Returning to Berlin in 1823, he was imprisoned at Koepenik, but was released after some months through the influence of Niebuhr. In 1827 he went to the United States and as soon as possible was naturalized as a citizen. He settled at Boston, and for five years edited The Encyclopaedia Americana (13 vols.). From 1835 to 1856 he was professor of history and political economy in South Carolina College at Columbia, S.C., and during this period wrote his three chief works, Manual of Political Ethics (1838), Legal and Political Hermeneutics (1839), and Civil Liberty and Self Government (1853). In 1856 he resigned and next year was elected to a similar post in Columbia College, New York, and in 1865 became professor of constitutional history and public law in the same institution. During the Civil War Lieber rendered services of great value to the government. He was one of the first to point out the madness of secession, and was active in upholding the Union. He prepared, upon the requisition of the president, the important Code of War for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, which was promulgated by the Government in General Orders No. 100 of the war department. This code suggested to Bluntschli his codification of the law of nations, as may be seen in the preface to his Droit International Codifié. During this period also Lieber wrote his Guerilla Parties with Reference to the Laws and Usages of War. At the time of his death he was the umpire of the commission for the adjudication of Mexican claims. He died on the 2nd of October 1872. His books were acquired by the University of California, and his papers were placed in the Johns Hopkins University.
His Miscellaneous Writings were published by D. C. Gilman (Philadelphia, 1881). See T. S. Perry, Life and Letters (1882), and biography by Harby (1899).
LIEBERMANN, MAX (1849- ), German painter and etcher, was born in Berlin. After studying under Steffeck, he entered the school of art at Weimar in 1869. Though the straightforward simplicity of his first exhibited picture, “Women plucking Geese,” in 1872, presented already a striking contrast to the conventional art then in vogue, it was heavy and bituminous in colour, like all the artist’s paintings before his visit to Paris at the end of 1872. A summer spent at Barbizon in 1873, where he became personally acquainted with Millet and had occasion to study the works of Corot, Troyon, and Daubigny, resulted in the clearing and brightening of his palette, and taught him to forget the example of Munkacsy, under whose influence he had produced his first pictures in Paris. He subsequently went to Holland, where the example of Israels confirmed him in the method he had adopted at Barbizon; but on his return to Munich in 1878 he caused much unfavourable criticism by his realistic painting of “Christ in the Temple,” which was condemned by the clergy as irreverent and remained his only attempt at a scriptural subject. Henceforth he devoted himself exclusively to the study of free-light and to the painting of the life of humble folk. He found his best subjects in the orphanages and asylums for the old in Amsterdam, among the peasants in the fields and village streets of Holland, and in the beer-gardens, factories, and workrooms of his own country. Germany was reluctant, however, in admitting the merit of an artist whose style and method were so markedly at variance with the time-honoured academic tradition. Only when his fame was echoed back from France, Belgium, and Holland did his compatriots realize the eminent position which is his due in the history of German art. It is hardly too much to say that Liebermann has done for his country what Millet did for France. His pictures hold the fragrance of the soil and the breezes of the heavens. His people move in their proper atmosphere, and their life is stated in all its monotonous simplicity, without artificial pathos or melodramatic exaggeration. His first success was a medal awarded him for “An Asylum for Old Men” at the 1881 Salon. In 1884 he settled again in Berlin, where he became professor of the Academy in 1898. He became a member of the Société nationale des Beaux Arts, of the Société royale belge des Aquarellistes, and of the Cercle des Aquarellistes at the Hague. Liebermann is represented in most of the German and other continental galleries. The Berlin National Gallery owns “The Flax-Spinners”; the Munich Pinakothek, “The Woman with Goats”; the Hamburg Gallery, “The Net-Menders”; the Hanover Gallery, the “Village Street in Holland.” “The Seamstress” is at the Dresden Gallery; the “Man on the Dunes” at Leipzig; “Dutch Orphan Girls” at Strassburg; “Beer-cellar at Brandenburg” at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, and the “Knöpflerinnen” in Venice. His etchings are to be found in the leading print cabinets of Europe.
LIEBIG, JUSTUS VON, Baron (1803-1873), German chemist, was born at Darmstadt, according to his baptismal certificate, on the 12th of May 1803 (4th of May, according to his mother). His father, a drysalter and dealer in colours, used sometimes to make experiments in the hope of finding improved processes for the production of his wares, and thus his son early acquired familiarity with practical chemistry. For the theoretical side he read all the text-books which he could find, somewhat to the detriment of his ordinary school studies. Having determined to make chemistry his profession, at the age of fifteen he entered the shop of an apothecary at Appenheim, near Darmstadt; but he soon found how great is the difference between practical pharmacy and scientific chemistry, and the explosions and other incidents that accompanied his private efforts to increase his chemical knowledge disposed his master to view without regret his departure at the end of ten months. He next entered the university of Bonn, but migrated to Erlangen when the professor of chemistry, K. W. G. Kastner (1783-1857), was appointed in 1821 to the chair of physics and chemistry at the latter university. He followed this professor to learn how to analyse certain minerals, but in the end he found that the teacher himself was ignorant of the process. Indeed, as he himself said afterwards, it was a wretched time for chemistry in Germany. No laboratories were accessible to ordinary students, who had to content themselves with what the universities could give in the lecture-room and the library, and though both at Bonn and Erlangen Liebig endeavoured to make up for the deficiencies of the official instruction by founding a students’ physical and chemical society for the discussion of new discoveries and speculations, he felt that he could never become a chemist in his own country. Therefore, having graduated as Ph.D. in 1822, he left Erlangen—where he subsequently complained that the contagion of the “greatest philosopher and metaphysician of the century” (Schelling), in a period “rich in words and ideas, but poor in true knowledge and genuine studies,” had cost him two precious years of his life—and by the liberality of Louis I., grand-duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, was enabled to go to Paris. By the help of L. J. Thénard he gained admission to the private laboratory of H. F. Gaultier de Claubry (1792-1873), professor of chemistry at the École de Pharmacie, and soon afterwards, by the influence of A. von Humboldt, to that of Gay-Lussac, where in 1824 he concluded his investigations on the composition of the fulminates. It was on Humboldt’s advice that he determined to become a teacher of chemistry, but difficulties stood in his way. As a native of Hesse-Darmstadt he ought, according to the academical rules of the time, to have studied and graduated at the university of Giessen, and it was only through the influence of Humboldt that the authorities forgave him for straying to the foreign university of Erlangen. After examination his Erlangen degree was recognized, and in 1824 he was appointed extraordinary professor of chemistry at Giessen, becoming ordinary professor two years later. In this small town his most important work was accomplished. His first care was to persuade the Darmstadt government to provide a chemical laboratory in which the students might obtain a proper practical training. This laboratory, unique of its kind at the time, in conjunction with Liebig’s unrivalled gifts as a teacher, soon rendered Giessen the most famous chemical school in the world; men flocked from every country to enjoy its advantages, and many of the most accomplished chemists of the 19th century had to thank it for their early training. Further, it gave a great impetus to the progress of chemical education throughout Germany, for the continued admonitions of Liebig combined with the influence of his pupils induced many other universities to build laboratories modelled on the same plan. He remained at Giessen for twenty-eight years, until in 1852 he accepted the invitation of the Bavarian government to the ordinary chair of chemistry at Munich university, and this office he held, although he was offered the chair at Berlin in 1865, until his death, which occurred at Munich on the 10th of April 1873.
Apart from Liebig’s labours for the improvement of chemical teaching, the influence of his experimental researches and of his contributions to chemical thought was felt in every branch of the science. In regard to methods and apparatus, mention should be made of his improvements in the technique of organic analysis, his plan for determining the natural alkaloids and for ascertaining the molecular weights of organic bases bv means of their chloroplatinates, his process for determining the quantity of urea in a solution—the first step towards the introduction of precise chemical methods into practical medicine—and his invention of the simple form of condenser known in every laboratory. His contributions to inorganic chemistry were numerous, including investigations on the compounds of antimony, aluminium, silicon, &c., on the separation of nickel and cobalt, and on the analysis of mineral waters, but they are outweighed in importance by his work on organic substances. In this domain his first research was on the fulminates of mercury and silver, and his study of these bodies led him to the discovery of the isomerism of cyanic and fulminic acids, for the composition of fulminic acid as found by him was the same as that of cyanic acid, as found by F. Wöhler, and it became necessary to admit them to be two bodies which differed in properties, though of the same percentage composition. Further work on cyanogen and connected substances yielded a great number of interesting derivatives, and he described an improved method for the manufacture of potassium cyanide, an agent which has since proved of enormous value in metallurgy and the arts. In 1832 he published, jointly with Wöhler, one of the most famous papers in the history of chemistry, that on the oil of bitter almonds (benzaldehyde), wherein it was shown that the radicle benzoyl might be regarded as forming an unchanging constituent of a long series of compounds obtained from oil of bitter almonds, throughout which it behaved like an element. Berzelius hailed this discovery as marking the dawn of a new era in organic chemistry, and proposed for benzoyl the names “Proïn” or “Orthrin” (from πρωί and ὄρθρυς). A continuation of their work on bitter almond oil by Liebig and Wöhler, who remained firm friends for the rest of their lives, resulted in the elucidation of the mode of formation of that substance and in the discovery of the ferment emulsin as well as the recognition of the first glucoside, amygdalin, while another and not less important and far-reaching inquiry in which they collaborated was that on uric acid, published in 1837. About 1832 he began his investigations into the constitution of ether and alcohol and their derivatives. These on the one hand resulted in the enunciation of his ethyl theory, by the light of which he looked upon those substances as compounds of the radicle ethyl (C2H5), in opposition to the view of J. B. A. Dumas, who regarded them as hydrates of olefiant gas (ethylene); on the other they yielded chloroform, chloral and aldehyde, as well as other compounds of less general interest, and also the method of forming mirrors by depositing silver from a slightly ammoniacal solution by acet aldehyde. In 1837 with Dumas he published a note on the constitution of organic acids, and in the following year an elaborate paper on the same subject appeared under his own name alone; by this work T. Graham’s doctrine of polybasicity was extended to the organic acids. Liebig also did much to further the hydrogen theory of acids.