SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY, K.C.B. 



{Read May 4, 1917.) 



In the untimely death of Sir W'ilham Ramsay the American 

 Philosophical Society has lost one of its most distinguished mem- 

 bers, the world of science a leader of rare insight and initiative, 

 England one of her most brilliant men, and his intimates a much 

 prized friend. He possessed a personality of unusual charm, 

 charged with wide interests, keen human affections, and vivid 

 enthusiasms. 



The only son of William Ramsay, a well-known civil engineer, 

 and Catherine Robertson Ramsay, the child destined later to 

 develop into a great chemist was born at Glasgow on the 2d of 

 October, 1852. He early turned his attention toward science, and 

 believed his talent in this direction to have been inherited from his 

 grandparents on both his father's and his mother's side — for he 

 came of families of physicians and naturalists. After preliminary 

 education at the Glasgow Academy, he entered the University of 

 Glasgow when only fourteen years old, taking at first a general 

 course, and later turning his attention especially toward chemistry. 

 In 1870, at the age of eighteen, his chemical studies had progressed 

 so far that he was anxious to seek further light in Germany, and in 

 the autumn of that year was able, in spite of the Franco-Prussian 

 war, to go to Heidelberg in order to study under Bunsen. Shortly 

 afterwards he turned toward Tubingen, where he worked for nearly 

 two years under Fittig, and gained his doctor's degree by virtue 

 of a dissertation upon ortho- and meta-toluic acid. 



In the autumn of 1872 the young doctor of philosophy of twenty 

 summers returned, full of enthusiasm, to his native city, and became 

 assistant in the " Young " laboratory of technical chemistry there. 

 Two years later he was made tutorial assistant in the University 

 of Glasgow. In spite of his charge of the elementary class of 

 200 students he found time to undertake investigations concerning 



