Background
Graham was born on December 21, 1805 in Glasgow, Scotland in 1805.
Graham was born on December 21, 1805 in Glasgow, Scotland in 1805.
He graduated from Glasgow University in 1824.
After graduation Thomas Graham was appointed professor of chemistry at the Anderson Institution in Glasgow in 1830. In 1837 he accepted a chair of chemistry at University College, London.
From 1855 until his death Graham was master of the mint. Graham's early papers on the absorption of gases by liquids (1826) led to his measuring the rate of diffusion of gases through porous plugs of plaster of Paris and, later, effusion or transpiration through tiny holes in platinum discs. In 1831 Graham laid his law of the diffusion of gases before the Royal Society in Edinburgh: "the rate of diffusion of a gas is inversely proportional to the square root of its density. " Extending his studies to the diffusion of liquids, he established the classification of substances into crystalloids and colloids, thus paving the way for the vast field of colloid chemistry. Graham's publications on ortho-, meta-, and pyrophosphoric acids (1833) encouraged Baron Justus von Liebig and Jean Baptiste Dumas to continue their investigations of polybasic acids, and Liebig revived the hydrogen theory of acids that had been proposed by Sir Humphry Davy. In 1835 Graham discovered that the alcoholates are compounds of salts with alcohol, analogous to salt hydrates. His Chemical and Physical Researches were published in 1876.
He never married and had no children.
