ON PROFESSOR THOMAS GRAHAM'S SCIENTIFIC WORK.* 



By Wiloam Odling, M.B., F.R. S., 



FuUcrian Professor of Chemistry, li. I. 



The simple story of Mr. Graliaiii's life, tliougli not without its measure 

 of interest, and certainly not without its lessons, is referred to in the 

 following pages only in illustration of the grander story of his work. 

 Thomas Graham was born in Glasgow, on the 21st December, 1805. He 

 entered as a student at the University of Glasgow, in 1819, with a view 

 to becoming ultimately a minister of the Established Church of Scot- 

 land. At that time the university chair of chemistry was filled by Dr. 

 Thomas Thomson, a man of very considerable mark, and one of the 

 most erudite and thoughtful chemists of his day. The chair of natural 

 philosophy was also tilled by a man of much learning. Dr. Meikleham, 

 who ai)pears to have taken a warm j)ersonal interest in the progress of 

 his since distinguished pupil. Under these masters, Mr. Graham ac- 

 quired a strong liking for experimental science, and a dislike to the 

 profession chosen for him by his father; who, for a time at least, seems 

 to have exerted the authority of a parent somewhat harshly, but quite 

 unavailingiy, to eftect the fultillment of his own earnest wishes in the 

 matter. 



After taking his degree of master of arts at Glasgow, in 182(3, Mr. 

 Graham worked for nearly two years in the laboratory of the University 

 of Edinburgh, under Dr. noi)e. He then returned to Glasgow ; and, 

 while supporting himself by teaching, at first mathematics and after- 

 ward chemistry, yet found time to follow up the path of experimental 

 inquiry, on which he had already entered. 



His tlrst original paper appeared in the Annals of Philosophy for 

 1820, its author being- at that time in his twenty-lirst year. It is inter- 

 esting to not(? that the subject of this communication, " On the absorp- 

 tion of gases by liquids," forms part and parcel of that large subject of 

 spontaneous gas-movement with which Mr. Graham's name is now so 

 inseparably associated ; and that, in a paper communicated to the IJoyal 

 Society just forty years later, he si>eaks of the licpiehability of gases by 

 chemical means, in language almost identical with that used in this ear- 

 liest of his published memoirs. 



Having, in the interval, contributed several other i)apers to the scien- 

 tific journals, in the year 1829 he published in the Quarterly Journal 

 of Science — the journal, that is to say, of the lioyal Institution — the 

 first of his papers relating specifically to the subject of gas-diffusion. It 



* From the proceediuirs of the Eoval Institution, Loudon. 

 12 s 71 



