Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/481

 Meadows Rendel [q.v.], by his wife, Catherine Jane Harris, was born at Plymouth 3 April 1829. The family connexion with engineering is notable, for Rendel's father was a distinguished member of that profession, and his three brothers were associated for many years with Lord Armstrong's firm at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. One of them, George Wightwick Rendel [q.v.], was for a short time a civil lord of the Admiralty; another, Stuart Rendel, was raised to the peerage as Baron Rendel in 1894. Alexander Rendel was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was a scholar. He was thirty-third wrangler in the mathematical tripos of 1851. He then became an assistant to his father, whose premature death in 1856 obliged him at the early age of twenty-seven to take over the control of the practice. He was responsible for much work in connexion with docks and harbours. As engineer to the London Dock Company he designed the large extension to the Victoria dock now known as the Royal Albert dock (1875). The Albert dock (1863–1867) and Edinburgh dock (1874–1881) for the Leith harbour and dock commissions are other important undertakings of his in this branch of engineering.

Rendel's main work, however, was done in connexion with Indian railways. He paid his first visit to India in 1857, the year of the Mutiny, when there were scarcely any railways in the country. During his early association with the East Indian Railway, as consulting engineer, he reorganized completely the tariff of passenger fares and freight rates, basing these charges on the cost per mile run. As a result the East Indian was the only railway in India to show profits on its working. His success attracted the attention of the India Office, and in 1872 he was appointed consulting engineer to the Indian State Railways. In this capacity he did admirable service, acting often in conjunction with his close friend Sir Richard Strachey [q.v.], who was for many years a member of the council of India. Rendel was responsible for designing many railway bridges in India. Two of the most important of these were the Lansdowne bridge over the Indus at Sukkur, opened in 1889, and at that time the largest cantilever bridge in existence, and the Hardinge bridge over the Ganges, completed in 1915. Nor was it only as an engineer that Rendel's assistance was valuable, for his advice was sought also upon the many administrative and commercial questions which affected the development of the railway system in India.

Rendel acted singly as a consulting engineer in London until 1888, when he took one of his sons and Mr. F. E. Robertson into partnership. Other partners were added later, and at the time of his death his firm was known as Rendel, Palmer, and Tritton. He was created K.C.I.E. in 1887. He died in London 23 January 1918.

Rendel married in 1853 Eliza (died 1916), eldest daughter of Captain William Hobson, R.N., the first governor of New Zealand, by whom he had five sons and three daughters.

 REYNOLDS, JAMES EMERSON (1844–1920), chemist, was born at Booterstown, co. Dublin, 8 January 1844, the only son of Dr. James Reynolds, who kept a medical hall at Booterstown. He was named after his great-uncle, Captain Emerson, R.N. On leaving school Emerson Reynolds, as he was usually called, became assistant to his father, and developed in early youth a strong bent for chemistry. Following his father's desire, he studied medicine, and in 1865 qualified as a licentiate of the Edinburgh College of Physicians and Surgeons. In the meantime he fitted up a small laboratory in his home at Booterstown, pursued his chemical studies unaided, and tried research work from the outset. His first paper, On the oleaginous matter formed on dissolving different kinds of iron in dilute acids, appeared in the Chemical News (1861), when he was only seventeen years of age. Several other papers of chemical interest were published by Reynolds while still in his 'teens. After practising for a short time in Dublin, he abandoned medicine on his father's death, and devoted himself solely to chemistry.

In March 1867 Reynolds was appointed keeper of minerals at the National Museum in Dublin, and in the following year analyst to the Royal Dublin Society. He now had access to a properly equipped laboratory, and here he made his first important contribution to chemistry. In 1868 he discovered thiocarbamide, or thiourea, the sulphur analogue of urea, which he obtained by the isomeric transformation of ammonium thiocyanate. His discovery was not due to chance. The existence of thiourea was indicated by 455