Dumas would probably have remained in Geneva had he not had a morning visit paid him in the year 1822. When at work in his laboratory one day, some one knocked and was bidden come in. "I was surprised to find myself face to face with a gentleman in a light-blue coat with metal buttons, a white waistcoat, nankeen breeches, and top-boots.... The wearer of this costume, his head somewhat bent, his eyes deep-set but keen, advanced with a pleasant smile, saying, 'Monsieur Dumas.' 'The same, sir; but excuse me.' 'I am M. de Humboldt, and did not wish to pass through Geneva without having had the pleasure of seeing you.'... I had only one chair. My visitor was pleased to accept it, whilst I resumed my elevated perch on the drawing stool.... 'I intend,' said M. de Humboldt, 'to spend some days in Geneva, to see old friends and to make new ones, and more especially to become acquainted with young people who are beginning their career. Will you act as my cicerone? I warn you however that my rambles begin early and end late. Now, could you be at my disposal, say from six in the morning till midnight?'" After some days spent as Humboldt had indicated the great naturalist left Geneva. Dumas tells us that the town seemed empty to him. "I felt as if spell-bound. The memorable hours I had spent with that irresistible enchanter had opened a new world to my mind." Dumas felt that he must go to Paris--that there he would have more scope and more opportunities for prosecuting science. A few kind words, a little genuine sympathy, and a little help from Humboldt were thus the means of fairly launching in their career of scientific inquiry these two young men, Liebig and Dumas.
In Paris, whither he went in 1823, Dumas found a welcome. He soon made the acquaintance and gained the friendship of the great men who then made natural science so much esteemed in the French capital. When the year 1826 came, it saw him Professor of Chemistry at the Athenæum, and married to the lady whom he loved, and who has ever since fought the battle of life by his side.
Liebig left Paris in 1824. By the year 1830 he had perfected and applied that method for the analysis of organic compounds which is now in constant use wherever organic chemistry is studied; by the same year Dumas had given the first warning of the attack which he was about to make on the great structure of dualism raised by Berzelius. In a paper, "On Some Points of the Atomic Theory," published in 1826, Dumas adopted the distinction made by Avogadro between molecules and atoms, or between the small particles of substances which remain undivided during physical actions, and the particles, smaller than these, which are undivided during chemical actions. But, unfortunately, Dumas did not mark these two conceptions by names sufficiently definite to enable the readers of his memoir to bear the distinction clearly in mind. The terms "atom" and "molecule" were not introduced into chemistry with the precise meanings now attached to them until some time after 1826.