2 , SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



is a comparatively common name in Scotland, but 

 whether it has any relation to the Ramsey island off 

 St. Davids or the bay in the Isle of Man must be left 

 to the philologists. Certainly it is very widely diffused, 

 for there are Finlanders who bear the same name and 

 trace their descent from the same ancestry as the 

 subject of this memoir. 



Dr. Johnson is reported by Boswell to have expressed 

 the opinion that " every man's life may be best written 

 by himself." Whatever the reader's view may be in 

 regard to this question the writer who undertakes the 

 serious task of compiling a biography will naturally 

 acknowledge an obligation when it happens that this 

 task has already been accepted by the subject of the 

 book, though he probably feels that the author of an 

 autobiography can do little more than supply facts. 

 Judgment of character and, generally, estimates concern- 

 ing the life and its influence can only be truly supplied 

 by contemporaries. Fortunately in the present case an 

 autobiography, though a mere outline, has been left by 

 Sir William Ramsay and furnishes a modest record 

 down to 1912. This however is written in German, 

 and is to be found as an introduction to Ostwald's 

 volume of Ramsay's Essays under the title "Vergangenes 

 und Kiinftiges aus der Chemie " (2nd edition, 1913, 

 Leipzig : Akademische Verlags-Gesellschaft). 



An interesting introductory passage in this auto- 

 biography expresses the writer's strong conviction of 

 the all-powerful influence of heredity and refers to the 



