2 PARENTAGE AND YOUTH CHAP, i 



benefit the general industry of the country, and he 

 was content to remain comparatively poor. 



The requirements of his business made him an 

 excellent practical chemist, but his interest in chemistry 

 reached far beyond these limits. In 1800 he founded 

 the Chemical Society of Glasgow, into which, by the 

 energy of his example and the kindly courtesy of his 

 manner, he brought those of his fellow-citizens who 

 were interested in the progress of theoretical as well 

 as practical chemistry. He was chosen first President, 

 and among his associates were the well-remembered 

 chemist and mineralogist, Thomas Thomson, Professor 

 of Chemistry in the Glasgow University, and Walter 

 Crum, of Thornliebank. Two years later, on the 

 foundation of a wider brotherhood of science by the 

 establishment of the Philosophical Society of Glas 

 gow, the Chemical Society was voluntarily dissolved 

 in favour of the new organisation, which thus received, 

 we may believe, not a little of the vigour which has 

 enabled it to flourish till now as a centre of scientific 

 life in the midst of the mercantile atmosphere of 

 Glasgow. William Ramsay s reputation as a chemist 

 spread outside his own country. His house was one 

 of the attractions to foreign chemists who came to 

 Glasgow ; and even long after his death his widow 

 received visits from such men as Liebig, who re 

 membered her husband s meritorious work. 



In the year 1809 William Ramsay married 

 Elizabeth Crombie, a second cousin of his own, 

 daughter of Mr. Andrew Crombie, writer in Edin 

 burgh. The Crombies, like the Ramsays, had for 

 many generations been connected with the trade of 

 dyers. There is a tradition that during the famous 

 Porteous Riot in Edinburgh in 1736, so graphically 



