NOTES 



Sir William Eamsay, K.C.B., F.R.S. (F. A. Mason, Ph.D.) 



By a somewhat grim coincidence each of the three divisions of chemical science 

 has, within the last eighteen months, suffered in succession the loss of one of its 

 most distinguished exponents. 



First we have had to mourn the death of that doughty warrior in the cause of 

 organic chemistry, Prof. Raphael Meldola ; then the death of Sir Henry Roscoe 

 robbed the province of pure inorganic chemistry of its doyen ; and now the third 

 division, physical chemistry, has to bear the loss of a man who indeed may be 

 looked upon as one of its founders. 



No British scientist in recent years has enjoyed so large a measure of public 

 confidence as Prof. Ramsay, and both the country he served so well and the 

 science to which he devoted his life will feel that his death has left a great and 

 ineffaceable gap alike in the ranks of scientists and of public men. 



Sir William Ramsay was born in Glasgow on October 2, 1852. On his father's 

 side the family had been for seven generations practising the art of dyeing, and on 

 the distaff side a number of physicians in the family history showed a certain bent 

 towards science, which was to manifest itself so strongly in a later generation. 



Prof. Ramsay has described himself in his early days as a dreamy youth of 

 somewhat unconventional education. He does not appear as a boy to have shown 

 anything more than average ability, either at the academy or at Glasgow Univer- 

 sity, which he entered at the age of fourteen ; nor, in fact, does he seem at first to 

 have shown that precocity and single-minded pursuit of one definite ideal which 

 so often characterises the youth of genius. 



His first introduction to chemistry arose as the result of an accident at football, 

 when, being confined to bed with a broken leg, his father presented him with a 

 copy of Graham's Chemistry and a few chemicals to while away the time, and 

 combine " instruction with amusement." 



According to his own confession his chief attraction towards chemical science 

 was the desire, not uncommon perhaps, to know how to make fireworks, and 

 certainly with little idea of devoting his life to the study of chemistry. 



At the University, however, he came under the eye of William Thomson, a 

 genial, sympathetic, and unconventional teacher with a great power of inspiring 

 enthusiasm among his pupils. Here, perhaps, it was that Ramsay began to find 

 his feet and to throw himself with enthusiasm into the examination of the facts of 

 chemistry. Later he studied under Tatlock also in Glasgow. 



At eighteen years of age he had imbibed all the chemical knowledge obtainable 

 in Glasgow, and decided to migrate to Germany to complete his chemical training. 

 This was the time of the anne'e terrible, the war of 1870, and at first it seemed 

 impossible to carry out the project. Later, however, the difficulties were overcome, 

 and after studying for some time under Bunsen at Heidelberg, he went to Fittig at 

 Tubingen, where he graduated after presenting a dissertation on toluylic acids. 



After these " Reisejahre " he returned to Glasgow, and for some years acted as 



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