Background
Thomas Andrews was born on the 19th of December of 1813 in Belfast, Ireland. He was the eldest son of Thomas John Andrews, a linen merchant, and Elizabeth Stevenson Andrews.
Thomas Andrews (1813-188), Irish Physical Chemist.
Andrews was first educated at the Belfast Academy and the Belfast Academical Institution. The photo of the Belfast Royal Academy (commonly shortened to B.R.A) is the oldest school in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Thomas Andrews studied medicine for four years at Dublin and for a year at Edinburgh, where he received the M.D. in 1835.
Andrews was awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society in 1844 for his studies on the continuity of the gaseous and liquid states.
Thomas Andrews was born on the 19th of December of 1813 in Belfast, Ireland. He was the eldest son of Thomas John Andrews, a linen merchant, and Elizabeth Stevenson Andrews.
Andrews was first educated at the Belfast Academy and the Belfast Academical Institution. After working for a short time in his father’s office in 1828, he studied chemistry at Glasgow and then spent a short period in Dumas’s laboratory in Paris in 1830. He studied medicine for four years at Dublin and for a year at Edinburgh, where he received the M.D. in 1835.
After studying medicine for four years at Dublin and for a year at Edinburgh, where he received the M.D. in 1835, Thomas Andrews established a medical practice in Belfast and at the same time was appointed the first professor of chemistry at the Belfast Academical Institution. In 1845 Andrews gave up both his medical practice and his teaching post to become the first vice-president of Queen’s College, Belfast. He also became professor of chemistry at Belfast when teaching started in 1849, and did not retire until 1879. In June 1849 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He published two pamphlets, Studium generale and The Church in Ireland, which he called “chapters of contemporary history.”
After some early work extending Schônbein’s discoveries regarding passivity of metals, Andrews turned his attention to thermochemistry and, in a series of papers read in the period 1841-1848, gave details of experiments, many of them remarkably accurate, on heats of neutralization, heats of formation of water and other oxides and of metallic halides, and on the heat evolved when one metal replaces another in solutions. His work was begun at about the same time as that of Hess, but although they obtained similar results, their conclusions did not always agree.
Andrews subsequently turned his attention to the problem of the constitution of ozone. This had been investigated by a number of chemists, including Schonbein, its discoverer. Its nature was still unknown, however, and it was by no means certain that the ozone obtained from different sources was one and the same substance; it was thought by some to contain hydrogen. Andrews says his researches extended over four or five years, and he finally reached the conclusion that all the supposed varieties of ozone were identical and that it was in fact oxygen in an altered or allotropic condition.
The investigation was continued in collaboration with P. G. Tait, but their attempts to determine the density of ozone proved abortive. This was because of their assumption that those reagents which were known to remove the ozonic properties from a mixture of ozone and oxygen actually combined with the ozone; they did not realize that the reagent removed an atom of oxygen from a molecule of ozone, leaving a molecule of oxygen, so that no volume change took place. Since a measurable weight of ozone thus appeared to occupy zero volume, it seemed that its density was infinite. This perplexing result (which they came near to explaining toward the end of their joint paper of 1860) led, however, to a proposal of the true solution by Odling in 1861. His researches formed the subject of the Bakerian lectures for 1869 and 1876; a further paper was published posthumously in 1887. The first printed account of his work appeared as a result of a communication from Andrews to W. A. Miller, who published it in his textbook (1863).
Andrews died in 1885, and was buried in the Borough Cemetery in Belfast.
(On the volumetric relations of ozone, and the action of t...)
Andrews was noted for his manipulative skill and ingenuity in solving practical problems; he constructed much of his own apparatus. He was a good university administrator and keenly interested in social and political problems.
In 1842, Andrews married Jane Hardie Walker. They had six children, including the geologist Mary Andrews.