Obituary notices of fellows deceased

Rudolph Messel was the son of Simon Messel, a banker of Darmstadt. He was the second of five children, of whom four were to make their homes in England ; the fifth acquired great distinction as an architect in Berlin. He lost his father when 11, and shortly after was sent to a Huguenot school at Friedrichsdorf in the Taunus, where he remained until he was 15 years old. His schoolmaster, Philip Reis, was the inventor of the first telephone. Messel, in his Presidential Address to the Society of Chemical Industry in New York in 1912, makes reference to the fact that he “assisted Reis in making the mechanical parts of some of his instruments and also repeatedly in his experiments, Reis being at one end of the circuit, speaking or singing, I listening at the other, orvice versa .” About this time the family circumstances changed, and it was clear that Messel would have to become self-supporting at an early date. It was his intention to become an engineer, and in 1863, he discussed his further course of action with an old friend of his father’s, H. Rau, then living in Frankfort. Rau appears to have advised Messel to devote himself to the study of commerce which he said would rapidly lead to independence, and to combine with this the study of Chemistry, Physics and Technology, and so become a manufacturer. It is clear that Messel’s whole course of action was influenced by this letter, as not only did he keep it to the last among his rarest letters, but followed the advice it contained almost verbally. In April, 1863, he became apprenticed to E. Lucius in his wholesale drug and chemical factory in Frankfort, and remained there until September, 1866, leaving to enter the Federal Polytechnic in Zurich, where he followed the regular first-year course. The following winter he spent at Heidelberg, studying physical chemistry under Erlenmeyer. He moved in the spring to Tübingen, where he finished his education, studying chemistry under Strecker, and continuing with him until April, 1870, carrying out work for which he obtained his degree. In April, 1870, he came to Manchester, originally to act as private assistant to Roscoe.