306 IN MEMORIAM—ALEXANDER NORMAN TATE. 
services as an able and reliable analyst had gained for him 
a reputation extending over a far wider circle, reaching even to 
the Continent. 
n the iiniits of this notice it is only possible to allude to the 
more salient points of his energetic career. Mr. A. Norman Tate 
was born in 1837 at Wells, Somerset, and educated at the Chapter 
Grammar School of that city, where his father, the late Mr. James 
Tate, was an alderman. He early evinced a taste for chemistry, and 
engaged for a few years in the study and practice of pharmacy. 
Coming as a young man to Liverpool, he entered the laboratory of 
the late Dr. Sheridan Muspratt, devoting himself to practical analysis 
and general chemistry. His researches were, even then, marked by 
unusual ability; several of his papers being read before the Chemical 
Society of London and the Royal Society of Dublin. On leaving 
superintendence of the details of the various manufacturing processes 
and the construction and working of the chemical plant. 
At the time of the original importation of petroleum into this 
country from America, Mr. Tate devoted special attention to the 
on ‘ Petroleum and its Products,’ which he published, being trans- 
lated and re-issued in France and Germany. His study of the oi 
question led to other appointments, in the course of which he 
superintended the working of an oil refinery in the Isle of Man, and, 
later, the designing and erection of a manufactory for the refinement 
of coal and shale oils in Flintshire. He then recommenced his 
analytical practice in Liverpool, which has, by his efforts and those 
of his brother, Mr. Frank H. Tate (now head partner of the firm), 
grown into one of the largest practices of the kind in the country. 
Mr. Tate was a specialist in the examination of oils and fats and in 
water analysis, and his firm holds several ‘ retainers’ as consultant 
chemists and chemical engineers to Corporations and other public 
bodies, besides several large chemical manufactories. 
His public educational work commenced soon after he settled 
in Liverpool, and both by teaching it lecturing he did much to 
popularise science. In 1870, in conjunction with Mr. Jamés 
Samuelson, he initiated the yaa, Science and Art Classes 
and for a long series of years he not only superintended the classe 
as honorary principal, but devoted four or five evenings a week, after 
the business of the day was over, to personally teaching several of the 
subjects, such as chemistry, hygiene, physiology, botany, ae gene 
biology. In this work he was aided by M r, W. Narram a LS 
alist, re aaah 
