Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/482

 theory, but its isolation had already baffled the skill of such distinguished chemists as Liebig and Hofmann in Germany. This discovery, described in the Journal of the Chemical Society of London for 1869, attracted much attention and was quickly republished in several continental scientific periodicals. It at once established Reynolds's position as one of the most promising of the younger British chemists. In 1871 he described the preparation of an interesting compound of acetone with mercuric oxide. This was the first colloidal derivative of mercury to be made known, and its formation is the basis of Reynolds's well-known test for acetone.

Reynolds was appointed professor of chemistry at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, in 1870, while he still retained his post at the Royal Dublin Society. He relinquished both positions in 1875, when he was elected to the chair of chemistry at Trinity College, Dublin, as successor to Dr. James Apjohn. He now wrote his Experimental Chemistry for Junior Students, published in 1882 in four small volumes, an original work in which the teaching of chemistry was developed on entirely new lines. By the aid of simple and carefully tested experiments, the student was taught to verify for himself the fundamental laws of chemistry by quantitative results—a method, now universally adopted, which Reynolds was the first to introduce. His book passed through several editions, and was translated into German.

Reynolds was an excellent teacher; the care which he bestowed upon his experimental illustrations, and his fine qualities as a lecturer, won the admiration and respect of his pupils. The duties of his chair left little time for uninterrupted research, yet he published more than a dozen scientific papers during the twenty-eight years that he remained at Trinity College. In 1903 he resigned his chair and went to live in London. At the Davy-Faraday laboratory he continued research, chiefly on silicon compounds, his last work (1913) being the synthesis of a felspar, anorthite, a calcium-aluminium silicate, which had the properties of the naturally occurring mineral.

Reynolds was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1880, and vice-president for 1901–1902. He was president of the Society of Chemical Industry (1891), president of the Chemical Society (1901–1903), and president of the chemical section of the British Association (1893). His mental power was active to the end, but his eyesight, never very good, gradually failed during his last years. He died suddenly 18 February 1920, at his house in Kensington.

Reynolds married in 1875 Janet Elizabeth, daughter of Prebendary John Finlayson, of Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, by whom he had a son and a daughter.

 REYNOLDS, OSBORNE (1842–1912), engineer and physicist, was born 23 August 1842 at Belfast. He came of a clerical family. His grandfather and great-grandfather had been rectors of Debach-with-Boulge, Suffolk. His father, the Rev. Osborne Reynolds, was fourth wrangler in 1837, and subsequently fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, principal of a school in Belfast, head master of Dedham grammar school, Essex, and finally, in his turn, rector of Debach. His mother was Jane Hickman. For his early education Reynolds, who was a boy at Dedham school, was indebted mainly to his father. He inherited a keen interest in mechanics, and at the age of nineteen entered the workshop of a mechanical engineer in order to make himself acquainted with the practical side of the subject before proceeding to Queens' College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1867 as seventh wrangler, and was elected a fellow of Queens' in the same year. After a short period in the office of a civil engineer, he was appointed in 1868 to the newly instituted professorship of engineering in the Owens College, Manchester. This post he held until his retirement, through ill-health, in 1905.

The courses of study laid down by Reynolds as professor were somewhat exacting, but he succeeded in rousing the interest and even enthusiasm of the more capable among his students, many of whom afterwards came to occupy posts of distinction. His long tenure of the professorship is chiefly memorable, however, for the series of original investigations which he carried out, sometimes with the co-operation of his assistants and pupils, to whom he always assigned a generous share of credit. These investigations dealt almost entirely with mechanical questions, or with physical phenomena so far as they appeared to admit of a mechanical explanation, and were highly original both in conception and in execution. Reynolds's acute physical insight enabled him to explain phenomena which other minds had regarded as obscure or even paradoxical. 456