17th of December, 1613. He was educated at Marischal college. At the age of eighteen he set out to travel on the continent of Europe, and passing through Poland, arrived at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in the university of which, by the assistance of his countryman John Craig then professor of mathematics there, he was enabled to study for three years. After studying and teaching for several years in various parts of Germany, he was appointed in 1591 professor of the lower mathematics, and in 1594 professor of the higher mathematics in the university of Helmstädt. In 1596 he took the degree of doctor of medicine, and was appointed physician to the court of Brunswick. In 1604 he was appointed pro-rector of his university. In 1607 he resigned his appointments in order to return to his native country. He appears soon afterwards to have acquired some property, which he ultimately bestowed on the seat of his early education, Marischal college, devoting part of it to the support of poor scholars, and part to the endowment of a professorship of mathematics. His published writings relate chiefly to medicine.—W. J. M. R.
* LIDDELL, Henry George, Dean of Christ church, Oxford and lexicographer, was born at Binchester in 1812. Educated at Christ church, Oxford, he took a double first-class in 1833; and entering the church, was select preacher at Oxford from 1842 to 1847. Appointed in 1845 domestic chaplain to the prince consort, he filled the responsible post of head-master of Westminster school from 1846 to 1855, when he became dean of Christ church. In 1843 appeared the great English-Greek Lexicon, familiarly known as "Liddell and Scott." The early editions were avowedly based on the work of Passow, but the labour on it for many years of Dr. Liddell and his coadjutor Dr. Scott, formerly master of Balliol, has given them the right to banish the name of the German from their title-page. It reached a fifth edition in 1861. In 1855 Dr. Liddell published a "History of Rome from the earliest times to the establishment of the empire," in which he embodied for younger students the results of that later research which has so greatly altered the aspects of Roman history.—F. E.
* LIDDELL, Sir John, M.D., F.R.S., C.B., &c., director-general of the medical department of the royal navy, received his medical education at the university of Edinburgh, and entered the naval service as an assistant-surgeon in 1812. In the following year he was in the Pactolus, 38, when that vessel having the Count D'Artois on board, entered the Gironde and took possession of the town of Polignac, and the forts at the entrance of the river. He was also at the bombardment of New London and Stoneytown in America, by the squadron under Sir Thomas Hardy. Returning to England in 1815, his ship was ordered to the French coast, where she remained blockading until the fall of Napoleon. While at Lisbon in the Naiad frigate, to which after several years' service in the West Indies he was appointed in 1823, Dr. Liddell turned his anatomical and surgical knowledge to good account, by instructing the medical youth of the hospital San Jose in the various surgical operations on the human body. Appointed surgeon of H.M.S. Asia, bearing the flag of Vice-admiral Sir Edward Codrington in 1826, Dr. Liddell was present at the battle of Navarino in the following year. Immediately after the action he was appointed physician to the fleet; and on the arrival of the combined Russian and English fleets at Malta, the sick and wounded of both were placed under his charge. For his services on this occasion Dr. Liddell was decorated with the order of St. Anne of Russia and that of Redeemer of Greece. The gold medal, founded by Sir Gilbert Blane for the best medical journal, was also awarded to him. Advanced shortly afterwards by his royal highness the duke of Clarence to the important post of surgeon to the naval hospital of Malta, Dr. Liddell found abundant scope for the exercise of his general and professional attainments. He planned a new hospital, which till the present day remains a model for similar institutions. Sir Walter Scott, during his passage to Malta in the Barham frigate, and during his sojourn in that island, had the benefit of Dr. Liddell's advice and attention. Dr. Liddell was also publicly thanked for his exertions during the prevalence of cholera at Malta in 1840. He was successively deputy inspector-general of Haslar hospital, and inspector-general of the royal hospital, Greenwich. In 1848 he received the honour of knighthood from her majesty, and in 1850 was made a companion of the bath. On the retirement of the late Sir William Burnett, Sir John Liddell succeeded him as director-general of the naval medical department. In 1859 he was made honorary physician to the queen. Since his accession to his present high position, Sir John has amply vindicated his reputation as an able administrator; and so far as his official position would allow, on all occasions promoted these measures which led to the recent improvements in the medical service of the royal navy.—J. O. M'W.
LIEBER, Francis, LL.D., a German resident in the United States, and a diligent contributor to various departments of literature, especially to the philosophy of politics and law, was born at Berlin on the 18th of March, 1800. He was studying medicine with a view to become an army surgeon, when Germany was once more roused against Napoleon, escaped from Elba. As a volunteer Lieber fought at Ligny and Waterloo; and, severely wounded afterwards at Namur, he lay two days on the battle-field. In the persecution of young German liberals which followed the assassination of Kotzebue by Sand in 1819, Lieber was arrested, and finding himself subjected to annoyances after his liberation, he embarked for Greece in 1821 as a Phil-Hellene. Returning penniless and friendless, he landed in Italy and made his way to Rome, where Niebuhr the historian was residing as Prussian minister. His story and character favourably impressed Niebuhr, who made him tutor of his son Marcus, and steadily befriended him. Even Niebuhr, however, could not procure him an unmolested residence in Germany, and after a short stay in England in 1825, Lieber proceeded in 1827 to the United States, where he lectured on history and political philosophy, and was ultimately made professor of both in the state college of South Carolina at Columbia. Of his numerous works the principal are "The Stranger in America," being sketches of men and things in the United States; "Political Ethics," 1838; "Legal Hermeneutics," 1841; and a small but interesting volume, "Reminiscences of Niebuhr," 1835. Lieber was the editor of the Encyclopedia Americana, a work of reference on the plan of the German Conversations-Lexikon, published at Philadelphia in 1828-32. His principal works have been translated into several languages.—F. E.
* LIEBIG, Justus, Baron von, one of the most distinguished chemical philosophers of the present day, was born at Darmstadt, the capital of the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, on the 8th of May, 1803. After having completed his classical education in the gymnasium of that city, his passion for the natural sciences induced his father, in 1818, to place him in a pharmaceutical establishment at Heppenheim. From this situation, in which he remained only ten months, he went in 1819 to the university of Bonn, and afterwards to that of Erlangen, where he took his degree of doctor of medicine. In 1822 he was sent to Paris at the expense of the grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, where he remained two years in the prosecution of his chemical studies, and associating with the most distinguished French chemists, MM. Guy-Lussac, Dumas, and Pelouze. In 1824 he communicated to the Academy of Sciences a memoir on the fulminic acid and the fulminates—compounds which had been discovered by our countryman Howard in 1800. Liebig was the first, however, who explained their true chemical constitution; and his memoir on the subject excited so much interest that Baron Humboldt, who heard it read, invited him to his house, and introduced him to his scientific friends. On the recommendation of this distinguished patron of science, he was appointed in 1824, though only twenty-one years of age, extraordinary professor of chemistry in the university of Giessen, founded in 1607. In 1826 he became ordinary professor of chemistry, and he then commenced, with the patronage of the government, that laboratory for teaching practical chemistry which attracted pupils from every quarter of the globe, and sent into the scientific world Hoffman, Wiess, Fresenius, Lyon Playfair, Gregory, Johnston, and other distinguished chemists.
In 1828 Liebig attended the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which met at Liverpool. On that occasion he read an interesting paper "On the Composition and Chemical relations of Lithic Acid," and such was the estimation in which he was held by the chemical section, that he was requested to draw up two reports, one "On Isomeric Bodies," and the other "On Organic Chemistry." None of these reports appeared in the Proceedings of the Association for 1839; but before the meeting which was held at Glasgow in 1840, he published his work entitled "Chemistry in its application to Agriculture and Physiology," which was translated by
