816 NOTICE OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE PROFESSOR GRAHAM. 
forward the resolution which had been passed to the President of the Pharmaceutical 
Society, with a request that he would lay it before the meeting of the Society in May. 
This concluded the business. 
TAUNTON CHEMISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 
A meeting of this Association was held on Monday, May 2nd, to consider the pro¬ 
priety of closing their shops on Thursday evenings at 5 o’clock during the summer 
months, for the purpose of giving their Assistants a little recreation. The experiment 
was tried last summer, but was not quite unanimous ; on the present occasion, how¬ 
ever, the resolution was passed without a single dissentient. 
A resolution was also passed, condemning the compulsory regulations respecting 
the keeping of poisons. 
ORIGINAL AND EXTRACTED ARTICLES. 
NOTICE OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE PROFESSOR GRAHAM, 
Being the introductory part, of a Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution “ On 
Professor Graham's Scientific Work.” 
BY WM. ODLING, M.B., F.R.S., 
FULLERIAN PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, ROYAL INSTITUTION. 
The simple story of Mr. Graham’s life, though not without its measure of interest, 
and certainly not without its lessons, is referred to in the following pages only in illus¬ 
tration of the grander storv 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 
1810, with a view to becoming ultimately a minister of the Established Church of Scot¬ 
land. At that time the University chair of Chemistry was tilled by Dr. Thomas Thom¬ 
son, 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 filled by a man of 
much learning, Dr. Meikleham, who appears to have takeu a warm personal 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 unavailingly, to effect the fulfilment of his own 
earnest wishes in the matter. 
After taking his degree of Master of Arts at Glasgow, in 1826, Mr. Graham worked 
for nearly two years in the laboratory of the University of Edinburgh, under Dr. Hope. 
He then returned to Glasgow; and, whilst supporting himself by teaching, at first 
mathematics and afterwards chemistry, yet found time to follow up the path of experi¬ 
mental inquiry, on which he had already entered. 
His first original paper appeared in the ‘Annals of Philosophy ’ for 1826, its author 
being at that time in his twenty-first year. It is interesting to note that the subject of 
this communication, “ On the Absorption 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 Royal Society 
just forty years later, he speaks of the liquefiability of gases by chemical means, in 
language almost identical with that used in this earliest of his published memoirs. 
Having, in the interval, contributed several other papers to the scientific journals, in 
the year 1829 he published in the ‘Quarterly Journal of Science’—the journal, that is 
to say, of the Royal Institution—the first of his papers relating specifically to the sub¬ 
ject of gas-diffusion. It was entitled “ A short account of Experimental Researches on 
the Diffusion of Gases through each other, and their Separation by Mechanical Means.” 
