16 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
amount to a profession, and which, at that time in particular, pro¬ 
mised few and scanty rewards for the efforts and sacrifices which it 
involved. In these trials it would appear that Graham was com¬ 
forted and supported by the sympathy and affection of an excellent 
mother, with whom, when he was absent, he regularly corresponded, 
and to whom he confided his most intimate and anxious feelings. 
In such circumstances, it must have been a source of pride and 
satisfaction to him that, in 1829, when scarcely twenty-four years of 
age, he was appointed Lecturer on Chemistry at the Mechanics’ 
Institution, Glasgow, and in 1830 Professor of Chemistry at the 
Andersonian Institution, an event of which his mother just sur¬ 
vived to hear. 
In 1837 he was appointed Professor of Chemistry in the London 
University, and remained in that appointment till the year 1855. 
During the five and twenty years for which he thus occupied a. 
professorial chair, first in Glasgow and then in London, Graham 
found himself in that position which was the one he would himself 
probably have selected as the best for carrying on his favourite 
plans of scientific investigation; and that long period was accord¬ 
ingly devoted to the assiduous prosecution of his great object, in 
the course of which his enthusiastic researches were rewarded by 
numerous important discoveries, which are not only in themselves 
valuable, but which must ever deserve the attention of chemical 
students, as examples of that assiduous application and persevering 
inquiry by which alone the hidden truths of nature can be 
brought to light. 
It is quite beyond my power to give any detailed account of Mr 
Graham’s discoveries, or to make a just estimate of their value in a 
science with which, in its rapidly advancing and ever expanding 
state, I am so imperfectly acquainted ; but I believe the statements 
on the subject which lately appeared in the new periodical, 
“ Nature,” may be relied on as accurate and just; and I have been 
furnished from a high authority with some materials as to these 
points, which I shall endeavour here to embody to the best of 
my ability. 
Graham’s tendency to the prosecution of scientific discovery 
showed itself while he was yet a pupil of Professor Thomson 
in Glasgow. He made some suggestions to that Professor as to 
