Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/133

Rh going through school he was injured by a gunshot, by which his health was impaired for a time, and he lost the use of one eye. He entered the University of Glasgow, where he gave special attention to chemistry and worked in the laboratory of the late Prof. Thomas Thomson. Next he went to University College, London, where he attended the classes of Prof. Graham and others, and worked in the laboratory of the late Dr. Anthony Todd Thomson. Having spent a short time in the laboratory of Prof. Liebig, at Giessen, and received the degree of Ph. D., he returned to University College, London, and acted as class and laboratory assistant to Prof. Thomson in the winter and summer sessions of 1840-'41, attending other courses in the college at the same time. After this he devoted some time to the chemistry of calico-printing, dyeing, etc., in the neighborhood of Manchester. From 1843, when he became associated with Mr. Lawes at Rothamsted as director of the laboratory, his career has been recorded in the history of that institution; and it is difficult to separate the work of the two, who have co-operated harmoniously and efficiently. The results of their investigations have been published in a series of papers, now numbering more than a hundred, in various journals, among which may be mentioned: The Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society, the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, the Journal of the Chemical Society, the Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Journal of the Statistical Society, the Journal of the Society of Arts, etc.; also in official reports and elsewhere.

Dr. Gilbert was elected a member of the Chemical Society in 1841, the year of its formation, and he contributed to the first volume of its memoirs a translation of a paper on the Atomic Weight of Carbon, by Prof. Redtenbacher and Prof. Liebig. He was president of the society in 1882-'83. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860, and in 1867 the council of the society awarded to him, in conjunction with Mr. Lawes, one of the royal medals. He is also a Fellow of the Linnæan Society and of the Royal Meteorological Society. He was President of the Chemical Section of the British Association in 1880. He traveled considerably in the United States and Canada in 1882 and 1884, studying the conditions of the agriculture of these countries. He was appointed Sibthorpian Professor of Rural Economy in the University of Oxford in 1884, and was reappointed for a second period of three years in 1887. He has honorary degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. He is a life governor of University College, London, an honorary member of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, of the Chemico-Agricultural Society of Ulster, of the Academy of Agriculture and Forestry of