NOVEMBER, 1916. Vol. XLI., NO. 488. THE ANALYST. OBITUARY. SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY. AT the western side of the old Andersonian University in George Street, Glasgow, on the place now occupied by the palatial building of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, there stood a dingy house, the Young Laboratory of Technical Chemistry. The chair was held by a professor of what would to-day be called “hostile alien origin,” a very kindly man, whose chief qualifications for a Scotch professorship of technology were that he had to struggle with the language and was not greatly versed in technology.His private assistant from September 6, 1872, was the writer, whose knowledge of the English language was still far more circumscribed, necessitating frequent reference to a dictionary in the middle of a conversation.There were about twenty students in the laboratory, who smiled in the most friendly manner while professor and assistant made themselves freely misunderstood. It was a relief when, at the end of September, a Scotch assistant was engaged for the laboratory tuition of the students. William Ramsay had just arrived from Tubingen, where he had studied organic.chemistry, physics, and geology, and obtained the Ph.D. degree by a dissertation on the Toluylic Acids. Born in Glasgow in 1852, he studied a t the University from 1866 to 1869, and entered in the latter year the laboratory of our esteemed Past-President, Dr. R. R. Tatlock, where for a year he was entirely occupied with analytical work. The influence of that year upon Ramsay is shown by the fact that his first appearance as an author was as translator of a little book by Beilstein on Analytical Chemistry, while almost his last consisted in the elaboration of the method for determining dissolved oxygen in water and effluents, in his function as a member of the Royal Commission on Sewage Pollution.Much of his exquisite manipulative skill may be traoed to his work under Tatlock.His grandfather was a dyer, and afterwards chemical manufacturer, producing pyroligneous acid and various acetates, potassium bichromate and Prussisn blue, or, rather, the ferro-ferri cyanide known its “ Turnbull’s blue,” which had been discovered by Ramsay’s grandfather, whose factories, or perhaps those that in course of time had taken their place, W.Ramsay took pride in showing. His father was an engineer under Robert Napier ; his mother, the daughter of a physician with strong chemical leanings. His uncle, Sir Andrew Ramsay, was the Director of330 OBITUARY : SIR WILTJAM RAMSAY the Geological Survey in succession to Murchison. Ramsay himself attributed his scientific gifts to inheritance from his ancestors.His kindly silent father and his most gentle and saintly mother, who showed me innumerable acts of kindness while I had upon me the homesickness of a youngster who, prior to his emigration to Scotland, had never left the parental house, I hold in affectionate and reverend memory. I spent many evenings at their home, where William enlivened the company with songs, which in later years were greeted with enthusiastic applause by his students at social evenings of the University College Students’ Club-“ Marlborouk s’en va-t-en guerre,” and such-like.He had a very good voice, played his own accompaniments, and was an expert whistler. He spoke German fluently, with occasional comic lapses, which I endeavoured to correct, in return for services ren- dered to me by his rough-heeing my efforts in English.He took lessons in con- versational French, and, I think, in Italian, and in later years was able to address meetings almost equally well in the four languages. He also had some knowledge of Dutch. William Ramsay soon became my intimate friend. We were both full of enthusiasm, and, as neither of us could obtain advice or stimulus from our professor, we were thrown upon our own resources and mutual help.Our daily conversations turned largely, apart from matters arising out of our immediate duties, round philo- sophical questions, renewed occasionally in later years. On his side, he was naturally influenced by his inheritance from Covenanting ancestors; 1: on mine, by that from unorthodox and agnostic surroundings.As far as I am concerned, these most friendly conversations affected the whole of my more mature opinions. Chemically our life at the Andersonian was unsatisfactory. The students scoffed a t the pro- fessor, and we felt hurt a t our association with him. As a consequence we both freed ourselves as soon as practicable from our engagements. He in 1874 entered into the serene and healthy atmosphere of the Glasgow University, and had the good fortune to continue his academic career and to OCCUPY himself with genial work and investigations. I, unluckily, jumped out of the frying- pan into the fire by accepting an engagement as assistant .to a physician who passed among a section of the public as a great chemist upon the strength of his possession and intelligent use of a microscope.While the professor had to ask his assistants for help in writing out the formula showing the action of hydrochloric acid upon metallic iron, my later employer required information as to the composition of quartz and such-like. At the Andersonian we were confronted for the first time with the working of the simple mercury Sprengel pump, which in its later developments became SO important an instrument in Ramsay’s epoch-making discoveries. As assistant to Professor Ferguson from 1874 onward, Ramsay lectured mainly on inorganic chemistry, and in 1880 became Professor, and soon afterwards Principal, of University College, Bristol.He relates how his knowledge of the Dutch language helped him to this post, one of the Governors of the College, a clergyman, being most favourably impressed by Ramsay’s ability to translate some theological pamphlets written in Dutch, which he had just received, but was unable to decipher.OBITUARY: SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 331 In Bristol he worked mainly on questions of critical pressures and temperatures, molecular volumes, and many other allied physico-chemical problems.In 1887 he became Williamson’s successor a t University College, London, and occupied this post till his retirement a year ago.This passed before the eyes of the whole chemical world, and affected and revolutionised scien- tific thought. The work done at Bristol formed, as it were, the preliminary training for the researches which culminated in the discovery, in 1894, of the family of inert gases, and of emanations, and led to experiments on the mutability of elem en t s .It is, of course, known to everybody that Lord Rayleigh had observed, early in 1894, that the specific gravity of nitrogen derived from the air was greater than that produced chemically. The explanation of this difference was entirely due to Ramsay’s industry, Lord Rayleigh having published in Nature the fact observed by him, and asking the readers to assist him in finding the cause.I count it an honour to have remained in constant touch and correspondence with Ramsay during the whole of his active life, to have been shown privately many of the phenomena and substances discovered and investigated by him, and to have received dedicated copies of almost all the papers he contributed to scientific literature.He always took an almost boyish delight in showing or repeating his experiments, and he often reminded me of Faraday’s simplicity, who, we are told, was wont, when showing to Royal Institution audiences new phenomena in elec- tricity, to turn to them with the appeal, “ Now, isn’t it beautiful !” To this sim- plicity in Ramsay’s character is attributable the fact that, after his name had become a household word, he was occasionally “ taken in ” by plausible promoters, who hoped to obtain his support for schemes to extract gold-from the public.Of his technical work, apart from his strictly scientific work, little is known to the outside world; but, as I have been associated with him on many occasions, I may be permitted to refer to some of this.He was an admirable witness before High Courts and Parliamentary Committees, and his help was, naturally, in great request. Deep wells were not available, and after much thought and experiment Parliamentary sanction was asked for the abstraction and use of river water, under proper conditions of storage, and safeguarding from pollution. A spot had been selected for the intake as far as possible removed from all danger. Shortly before the Parliamentary inquiry took place there occurred a remarkable catastrophe.Long-continued easterly storms (during which the G.E.R. steamer Berlin was wrecked at the Hook of Holland) drove the sea-water inland far beyond any point which i t had reached “ within memory of living man,” and the river a t the proposed intake became temporarily brackish.The Parliamentary Committee, in consequence, refused t.0 sanction the scheme until means could be found to prevent the town supply from becoming mixed with sea-water. Ramsay and I collaborated in the construction of devices intended to announce automatically the arrival of sea-water some miles below the intake and the closing of the valves.We brought two plans before %he Committee during the next session, one being based upon the altered electric It is not my intention here to write a history of Ramsay’s work. A town on the East Coast required an extension of its water-supply.332 OBITUARY: SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY resistance, another upon the change in specific gravity, of the river water. These tphe Committee deemed efficient, and gave its sanction to the proposed extension, this being the first occasion, after an interval of many years, on which river water was allowed to be used as a public supply.Coolgardie Goldfields are situated in a waterless district, more than three hundred miles from the sea. The Government of Western Australia had con- structed a t enormous expense a pipe line of thin steel, supplying an adequate quantity of good water from the neighbourhood of the coast.Unfortunately, it was found that after a few years the corrosive action of the water on the steel pipes began to obstruct and perforate these, the whole structure becoming endangered, The Government instructed the eminent engineer, Dr. G. F. Deacon, Sir William Ramsay, and the writer, to inquire into the subject and to devise means of arresting the corrosion.We arrived a t the conclusion that owing to the construction of the line, which naturally ran up hill and down dale, the water became charged a t a number of reservoirs with oxygen, and that the oxygen thus introduced at intervals was the prime cause of the trouble. Several modes of removing the oxygen and preventing its reintroduction into the supply were considered.Ramsay constructed a most ingenious device for pumping out the dissolved air from the water, and in- stalled at University College an experimental plant, working continuously and a t very small cost, supplying water in which bright steel bars remained absolutely untarnished for weeks. In an entirely different field his assistance was of great help in a law case which aroused much public interest-namely, the litigation concerning the composition of ritual wax candles for use in Roman Catholic churches. The questions in- volved were quite outside his proper work, but perhaps on that account he took all the greater pleasure in their elucidation.The work he did as a member of the Royal Commission on Sewage Pollution, sitting for many years after 1898, most materially helped to solve the problem of sewage purification, which had been one of the most urgent from the middle of last century.Ramsay was always proud of his Scottish descent, and his name will ever be counted as one of the foremost of the many Scotsmen who have helped in the rearing of the edifice of modern science.Scotland’s sons who have thus contributed are humerous out of proportion to its population, and surely thus exceed those of any other country in the world. They did fundamental work: Hume, Hutton, James Watt, Thomas Graham, Thomas Thomson, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), James Dewar, William Ranisay. From the long-ago time of 1872 to his death on July 23, 1916,I always found him the same kindly, upright, joyous friend, unspoiled by his successes and by the honours which were heaped upon him by scientific societies, academies, and Govern- ments.A few years ago he recurred to our early philosophical discussions, and wrote t o me : “ I think I have found the answer. It is in a book by Jerome K. Jerome;, here is the quotation :OBITUARY: SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 333 " ' What do you believe,' I asked-' father, really, I mean ?' The night had fallen.My father put his arm round me, and drew me to him. " ' That we are God's children, little brother,' he answered-' that what He wills for us is best. It may be life; it may be sleep; it will be best. I cannot think that He will let us die; that were to think of Him as without purpose.But His uses may not be our desires. We must trust Him. Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him.' " We walked in sileiice before my father spoke again: " ' Now abideth these three: faith, hope, and charity. You remember the verse-faith in God's goodness to us, hope that our desires may be fulfilled; but these concern but ourselves-6he greatest of all is charity.' ' Often we do what we think right, and evil comes of it, and out of evil comes good. We cannot under- stand; maybe the old laws we have misread.But the new law, that we love one another-all creatures He has made-that is so clear. And if it be that we are here together only for a little while, the future dark, how much the greater use have we of one another !' " And Ramsay summed up: " That appears to me about the sum of the whole matter . ' ' May I, lastly, quote a few words written to me by Lady Ramsay, after death had released the good and noble man from terrible suffering ?- " One of the attractions of his retirmxnt was that he hoped to see his old friends in the quiet of the country; but it was not to be. The war made it impossible. And then came the weary illness. The way he bore the suffering, and what to him was worse, the inaction, was truly heroic. To-day people belonging to almost all the European nations are killing each other; yet it is true that the world is better for having had Ramsay. " ' Be kind-that is all it means,' continued my father. It did one good to be near him." OTTO HEHNER~