Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/470

 Rachel, daughter of Frederick Simpson. He had two sons and three daughters, one of whom, Ella, married Sir Harry Aubrey de Vere Maclean [q.v.].

 RAMSAY, WILLIAM (1852–1916), chemical discoverer, was born 2 October 1852 at Queen's Crescent, Glasgow, the only child of William Ramsay, by his wife, Catharine Robertson. He inherited scientific ability from both parents; for, whilst his father was a civil engineer of considerable scientific attainments and his paternal grandfather a well-known manufacturer of chemicals used by dyers (and probably the discoverer of potassium bichromate and Turnbull's blue), his mother was descended from an Edinburgh family which for several generations had produced medical men of note.

From 1866 to 1869 William Ramsay studied classics, general literature, logic, and mathematics at the university of Glasgow. In 1869 he went to the chemical laboratory of Robert Tatlock, attending at the same time lectures at the university on physics, chemistry, anatomy, and geology. At the close of the Franco-Prussian War he went to Heidelberg with the intention of studying under R. W. von Bunsen, but early in 1871 he changed to Rudolf Fittig's laboratory at Tübingen, where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. for a research on toluic and nitro-toluic acids. Returning to Glasgow in 1872, he was appointed assistant in the Young laboratory of technical chemistry. In 1874 he became the assistant of Professor John Ferguson in the chemical department of the university of Glasgow. In 1880 he was appointed professor of chemistry at University College, Bristol, of which in the following year he also became principal. In 1887 he was chosen to succeed Alexander William Williamson in the chair of general chemistry at University College, London. Here he worked until his retirement in 1913. His few remaining years were spent near Hazelmere, in Buckinghamshire, where he had bought a house and built a small chemical laboratory. He was actively engaged on chemical work in connexion with the European War when death overtook him 23 July 1916 at the age of sixty-three. He had married, in 1881, Margaret, daughter of George Stevenson Buchanan, by whom he had one son and one daughter.

Ramsay's scientific work may be divided broadly into five periods, of which the first, 1874–1880, was spent in Glasgow. During this time he devoted himself chiefly to investigations in the field of organic chemistry, obtaining various pyridinic acids from a complex mixture of pyridine bases, and establishing a close relationship between the alkaloids, quinine and cinchonine, and pyridine. In the second period (Bristol, 1880–1887) he turned to the field of physical chemistry, and, in collaboration with his assistant, Dr. Sydney Young, published an important series of papers dealing with vapour-densities, critical constants, evaporation, and dissociation. His work in London (1887–1913) may be divided roughly into three periods. At first he continued the physico-chemical work which had occupied his attention at Bristol. The most remarkable research of this period was his determination (in collaboration with his pupil Dr. John Shields) of the molecular complexity of pure liquids, as deducible from the variation with temperature of their ‘molecular surface-energies’.

Although Ramsay had now established his reputation as one of the most eminent physical chemists in Europe, the great work of his life was still to come—the discovery of the chemically inert elementary gases, argon, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon. Lord Rayleigh [q.v.], in the course of very accurate investigations into the densities of gases, had found a small difference between the densities of ‘atmospheric’ and chemically pure nitrogen. He sought the help of Ramsay, and after a few months of their joint work came the startling announcement at the British Association meeting in 1894 that there was present in the atmosphere an elementary gas new to science. Owing to its complete chemical inertness it was named argon. This discovery was soon followed by another of equal importance; for Ramsay, having had his attention directed by (Sir) Henry A. Miers to a statement by W. F. Hillebrand that the rare mineral, cleveite, gave off a considerable amount of gas on heating, repeated the experiment and found in the gas from cleveite another new inert elementary gas, identical in its spectrum with the element helium whose presence in the sun had been spectroscopically detected by Dr. P. J. C. Janssen, (Sir) E. Frankland, and (Sir) Norman Lockyer. The most remarkable thing about these new elements was their total lack of any capacity for entering into chemical combination. Ramsay divined that there must exist a whole related family of such inert elements; he at once began to search for the others, and after many  444