Sir William Ramsay - Biographical

William Ramsay was born in Glasgow on October 2, 1852, the son of William
Ramsay, C.E. and Catherine, ne Robertson. He was a nephew of the geologist, Sir
Andrew Ramsay.

Until 1870 he studied in his native town, following this with a period in Fittig's
laboratory at Tbingen until 1872. While there his thesis on orthotoluic acid and its
derivatives earned him the degree of doctor of philosophy.

On his return to Scotland in 1872 he became assistant in chemistry at the Anderson

College in Glasgow and two years later secured a similar position at the University
there. In 1880 he was appointed Principal and Professor of Chemistry at University
College, Bristol, and moved on in 1887 to the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at
University College, London, a post which he held until his retirement in 1913.

Ramsay's earliest works were in the field of organic chemistry. Besides his doctor's
dissertation, about this period he published work on picoline and, in conjunction
with Dobbie, on the decomposition products of the quinine alkaloids (1878-1879).
From the commencement of the eighties he was chiefly active in physical chemistry,
his many contributions to this branch of chemistry being mostly on stoichiometry
and thermodynamics. To these must be added his investigations carried on with
Sidney Young on evaporation and dissociation (1886-1889) and his work on
solutions of metals (1889).

It was however in inorganic chemistry that his most celebrated discoveries were
made. As early as 1885-1890 he published several notable papers on the oxides of
nitrogen and followed those up with the discovery of argon, helium, neon, krypton,
and xenon. Led to the conclusion by different paths and, at first, without working
together, both Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay succeeded in proving that
there must exist a previously unknown gas in the atmosphere. They subsequently
worked in their separate laboratories on this problem but communicated the results
of their labours almost daily. At the meeting of the British Association in August
1894, they announced the discovery of argon.

While seeking sources of argon in the mineral kingdom, Ramsay discovered helium
in 1895. Guided by theoretical considerations founded on Mendeleev's periodic
system, he then methodically sought the missing links in the new group of elements
and found neon, krypton, and xenon (1898).

Yet another discovery of Ramsay (in conjunction with Soddy), the importance of
which it was impossible to foresee, was the detection of helium in the emanations of
radium (1903).

With regard to the scientific honours which - besides the Nobel Prize have been
awarded to Ramsay, mention can be made of a great number of honorary
memberships, viz. of the Institut de France, the Royal Academies of Ireland, Berlin,
Bohemia, The Netherlands, Rome, Petrograd, Turin, Roumania, Vienna, Norway and
Sweden; the Academies of Geneva, Frankfurt and Mexico; the German Chemical
Society; the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; the Acadmie de
Mdecine de Paris; the Pharmaceutical Society, and the Philosophical Societies of
Manchester, Philadelphia and Rotterdam. He also received the Davy and Longstaff
Medals, honorary doctorate of Dublin University, the Barnardo Medal and a prize of
$ 5,000 from the Smithsonian Institution, a prize of Fr. 25,000 from France (together
with Moissan), and the A.W. Hoffmann Medal in gold (Berlin, 1903). He was created
K.C.B.(Knight Commander of the Order of Bath) in 1902, and was also a Knight of
the Prussian order "Pour le mrite", Commander of the Crown of Italy, and Officer of
the Legion d'Honneur of France.

In 1881 Ramsay married Margaret, the daughter of George Stevenson Buchanan.

They had one son and one daughter. His recreations were languages and travelling.

Sir William Ramsay died at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on July 23, 1916.