PKEFACE vii 



William Turnbull, Mr. Robert Dowie Urquhart, Mrs. 

 Worthington, and Dr. Morris Travers, F.R.S. 



Thanks are also due to the Council of the Chemical 

 Society for permission to photograph the portrait oppo- 

 site the title-page and to the Council of the Royal 

 Society for the figures of apparatus. Professor John M. 

 Thomson, F.R.S., has kindly supplied the excellent 

 portrait taken by him in 1912. 



A word of explanation may also be looked for in 

 regard to the authorship of the volume. Late in the 

 autumn of 1916 I was requested by the Professors in 

 the Chemical Department of University College to 

 undertake the work. This may have been suggested 

 by the fact that I had already prepared hastily an 

 obituary notice for the Journal of the Society of Chemical 

 Industry by desire of the Council of that Society. I did 

 not, however, feel at liberty to undertake the task until 

 I had been assured that my doing so would be consonant 

 with the wishes of Lady Ramsay. I cannot refrain 

 from offering to her an expression of more than ordinary 

 thanks for the privilege, as I regard it, of being admitted 

 to the view which I now have of her brilliant husband's 

 life and character. I can claim an acquaintance with 

 him of more than thirty-five years, and I can boast of 

 a friendship of at least twenty-five. Nevertheless, I 

 feel that it is only now that I know something of the 

 man. The long series of letters which have been pre- 

 served, extending over nearly fifty years, many of them 

 written in the full confidence of youth and a close 

 intimacy with friends and relations, reveal the dominant 



