Justus von Liebig and the rise of teaching and industrial research laboratories

Born on 13 May 1803, in Darmstadt, Justus von Liebig entered a world in which Europe was making the first stumbling steps towards a science‐based society. Chemistry interested him from an early age and, as his education took shape, it tended towards this developing discipline. He left the gymnasium to work in Heppenheim as an apothecary's apprentice, but an unscheduled and rather violent fulmination of mercury caused his dismissal after only ten months. Returning to Darmstadt, where his father was a colour dealer and druggist, Liebig spent a further six months building up a knowledge of the crude industrial chemistry around him. Finally he persuaded his father to finance him at the university of Bonn, where he studied under Kastner. When Kastner moved to Erlangen, Liebig followed suit.