Background
Ramsay was born in Glasgow on 2 October 1852, the son of civil engineer William Ramsay and Catherine, née Robertson. He was a nephew of the geologist Sir Andrew Ramsay.
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Excerpt from Essays Biographical and Chemical These Essays on Chemical History and Biography, and on chemical topics, have been delivered as lectures, or published as magazine articles at various times in the course of the last twenty-five years. A little alteration has been necessary to avoid undue repetition, and in some cases footnotes have been added, to correct statements which have been rendered inaccurate by the progress of discovery. I have to thank the University of Glasgow for permission to reprint the oration on Black; the editor of the Youths Companion for permission to reprint the sketch of Lord Kelvin, What is an Element? 'On the Periodic Arrangement of the Elements,' 'Radium and its Products,' 'What is Electricity?' and 'How Discoveries are Made': the editor of the Contemporary Review for permission to reprint the article on 'The Becquerel Rays'; and the Royal Society, which has kindly granted similar permission to republish the life of M. Berthelot. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Excerpt from Elements and Electrons During the last fifteen years, owing to the dis coveries of Henri Becquerel; the Curies, Sir J. J Thomson and his pupils, especially H. R. C. Wilson, Rutherford Soddy, Perrin, and others, the ancient doctrine of the discrete nature of matter and the hypotheses of the existence of atoms and molecules have received new confirm ation. Johnstone Stoney's atom of electricity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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(It is, doubtless, owing to the brilliant originators of t...)
It is, doubtless, owing to the brilliant originators of this method of classification Kekule, Hofmann, Wurtz, Frankland, and others too numerous to mention, but whose names occupy a prominent place in the history of our science that the domain of organic chemistry has been so systematically and successfully enlarged, and that it presents an aspect of orderly arrangement which can scarcely be surpassed. This has unfortunately not been the fate of the chemistry of the other elements. Nearly twenty-five years have elapsed since the discovery by Newlands, Mendeleeff, and Meyer of the periodic arrangement of the elements; and, in spite of the obvious guide to a similar classification which it furnishes, no systematic text-book has been written in English with the periodic arrangement of the elements as a basis. The reasons for this neglect have probably been that the ancient and arbitrary line of demarcation between the nonmetals and the metals has been adhered to; that too great importance (from the standpoint of pure chemistiy) has been assigned to the distinction between acid hydroxides and basic hydroxides (acids and bases), which has tended to obscure the fact that they belong essentially to the same class of compounds, viz., the hydroxides ;and that the chemistry of text-books has almost always been influenced by commercial considerations. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text.
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Ramsay was born in Glasgow on 2 October 1852, the son of civil engineer William Ramsay and Catherine, née Robertson. He was a nephew of the geologist Sir Andrew Ramsay.
He attended the Glasgow Academy where he studied the classics, mathematics, and literature and then went to study in Germany at the University of Tübingen with Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig where his doctoral thesis was entitled Investigations in the Toluic and Nitrotoluic Acids. On his return to Glasgow he became an assistant at Anderson's College and later an assistant in the department of chemistry at the University of Glasgow.
University College, Bristol, appointed him professor of chemistry in 1880 and principal in 1881.
His earlier work was mainly concerned with organic chemistry, and he published researches on picoiine and its derivatives in 1876-78 and on quinine and its decomposition products in 1878-79.
Later his attention was taken up with questions of physical and inorganic chemistry.
With Sydney Young and others he investigated the critical state and properties of liquids and the relationship between their vapour pressures and temperature, and with John Shields he applied measurements of the surface tension of liquids to the determination of their molecular complexity.
Although his doctor's thesis on toluic and nitrotoluic acids was in the field of organic chemistry, inorganic and physical chemistry became his chief interest in 1880, when he investigated the volume and boiling points of liquids.
In 1895 Ramsay announced the discovery of helium in the atmosphere, detected previously in the sun with the spectroscope by Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer and Sir Edward Frankland.
In 1898, in a lecture before the German chemical society, he announced the discovery, with Morris W. Travers, of three new gases separated from liquid air.
The new gases were named neon, krypton, and xenon. During the next three years Ramsay improved methods of isolating and studying these five inert atmospheric gases.
He also discovered in 1903 that these elements were all present in radioactive minerals.
In 1905 he discovered radiothorium, a new element.
In 1910 he obtained a small quantity of radium and from it collected about 0. 00005 cc.
of the inert gas radon.
Working with amazing experimental skill, Ramsay in collaboration with R. W. Gray succeeded in determining the density, atomic weight, and other physical properties of the tiny sample.
He discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904. He had been made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1888, in 1902 he was knighted.
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Ramsay was married to Margaret Johnstone Marshall and had a daughter, Catherine Elizabeth (Elska) and a son, William George, who died at 40.
Civil engineer
Sir
