His research also included calculations of the atomic weight of platinum,[1] and the examination of hydrates, carbonates and peroxides of the alkali metals.
There he met Henry Enfield Roscoe who brought him back to Britain with him to work as his private assistant.
[2] In 1861 he received a post as chief laboratory assistant in the chemistry department of the university of Edinburgh under lord Playfair, and stayed there until 1869.
[6] In 1869, he took a break from the UK and returned to Germany, and worked as a privatdocent then as a lecturer in meteorology at the local Agricultural College in the Poppelsdorf district of Bonn.
In 1891 he received the Graham medal from the Philosophical Society of Glasgow for his work on the qualitative composition of water.