Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/406

  Ballads’ were published in Wigton, but the best edition is that in 2 vols. published in Carlisle in 1820.

[Poetical Works of R. Anderson, with life of the author written by himself, Carlisle, 1820; Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect, Alnwick, 1840; Songs and Ballads of Cumberland, edited by Sidney Gilpin, Carlisle, 1874.]  ANDERSON, THOMAS (1832–1870), botanist, was born in Edinburgh 26 Feb. 1832, and was educated for the medical profession, graduating as M.D. at Edinburgh in 1853. His attention was early directed to botany, and while at the Edinburgh university he obtained a gold medal for the best local collection of plants, and assisted in arranging the Indian herbarium. In 1854 he entered the Bengal medical service, and went to Calcutta. Subsequently he went to Delhi, where he was actively engaged during the mutiny, returning to Calcutta in 1858. His health failing, he came home, and, the steamer being detained at Aden for some days, he made an interesting collection of the plants of that region, upon which he based his ‘Florula Adenensis,’ published in 1860. About this time he returned to India, taking temporary charge of the Calcutta Botanic Garden during the absence of Dr. Thomas Thomson, whom he afterwards succeeded as director. He did much to improve the garden, and introduced valuable medicinal plants, especially cinchona and ipecacuanha: to him is due the institution of the experiments which led to the successful cultivation of the former in India, and he issued many valuable reports upon the subject. In 1864 he undertook to organise and superintend the forest department in Bengal, but after two years he was forced to abandon this work by the pressure of his other duties. In 1868 he was compelled by serious illness to return home, but subsequently recovered, and devoted himself with much energy to working out from herbaria and his own collections the flora of India. The difficult order Acanthaceæ received his special attention; but before his work could be completed he was again attacked by illness, and died at Edinburgh of disease of the liver on 26 Oct. 1870. He was a man of studious habits and amiable disposition, and his loss left an important gap among Indian botanists.

[Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh (1873), ii. 41–5; Journ. Bot. 1870, 368.]  ANDERSON, THOMAS, M.D. LL.D. (1819–1874), chemist, was the son of a physician at Leith, from whom he acquired scientific tastes. After passing through the High School of Leith and the Edinburgh Academy, he became a medical student in the university of Edinburgh. Here he obtained (1839–40) the biennial ‘Hope Prize,’ and he graduated M.D. in 1841, choosing for his thesis ‘The Nature of the Chemical Changes which take place in Secretion, Nutrition, and the other Functions of Living Beings.’ In 1842 he studied under Berzelius in Stockholm; in 1843 in the Giessen laboratory under Liebig; and he afterwards visited Bonn, Berlin, and Vienna, returning to Edinburgh an accomplished chemist. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1845; a year later an extra-academical university teacher of chemistry, and in 1848 chemist to the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, an appointment which he held to within a short time of his death.

In 1852 he succeeded Dr. Thomas Thomson as regius professor of chemistry in the university of Glasgow. In 1859 he was elected President of the Glasgow Philosophical Society; and in 1867 president of the Chemical Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Royal Society of Edinburgh awarded him the Keith medal in 1855, and the Royal Society of London one of the royal medals in 1872. His last years were passed in much mental and bodily suffering, and he died on 2 Nov. 1874. Anderson's earliest researches were on a new mineral species, and on the atomic weight of nitrogen. He conducted an elaborate inquiry into ‘The Products of the Destructive Distillation of Animal Substances,’ which resulted in the discovery of a new pyridine series, and of certain fatty amines. Then he examined the action of sulphur upon fixed oils, and obtained a new definite organic sulphide. His paper ‘On the Crystalline Constituents of Opium’ was very exhaustive. In 1861 he published a work on ‘Anthracene and its Derivatives,’ and somewhat later interesting theoretical memoirs on the Platino-pyridine Bases, and on the Polymerisation of Pyridine, and Picoline. His agricultural experiments, which extended over nearly a quarter of a century, are almost all published in the ‘Journal of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland.’ He examined the composition of wheat, beans, and turnips at different periods of their growth, and made a number of analyses of soils, manures, plant ashes, and oil cakes. His ‘Elements of Agricultural Chemistry’ was published in 1860, and although not very original in treatment, it gave a clear summary of the science at that date. Anderson was an organic and agricultural chemist, and but rarely turned his attention to inorganic bodies.

[Journal of the Chemical Society of London (1875), pp. 1309–13.] 