Charles Hanson Greville Williams

Charles Hanson Greville Williams (born September 22, 1829 in Cheltenham , † June 15, 1910 in London ) was a British chemist .

Williams was the son of a lawyer and received tutor training. In 1852/53 he was a consulting and analytical chemist in London. He then worked for three years as assistant to Professor Thomas Anderson at the University of Glasgow and then at Lyon Playfair at the University of Edinburgh . He was lecturer in chemistry at Normal College in Swansea from 1857/58 , then chemist at George Miller & Company in Glasgow, from 1863 to 1868 assistant to William Henry Perkin in Greenford Green and from 1868 to 1877 as a partner to Edward Thomas and John Dower the Star Chemical Works in Brentford . From 1877 to 1901 he was a chemist at the Gas Light and Coke Company in London.

He investigated the decomposition products during dry distillation of bitumen and coal and later of rubber, where he discovered isoprene in 1860 . He also found that isoprene becomes more viscous after a long period of time, i.e. it polymerizes; the production of rubber from isoprene only found others later (in particular Fritz Hofmann in Germany 1909). In 1856 he synthesized quinoline blue , the first quinoline dye and later of importance in color photography .

In 1862 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society .

He had artistic and literary interests and studied Egyptian hieroglyphics in his spare time .

Fonts

• A Handbook of Chemical Manipulation, 1857, Supplement, 1879
• Manual of Chemical Analysis for Schools, 1858
• Tar and Tar Products, in Thomas Newbigging, WT Fewtrell (Ed.) King's Treatise on the Science and Practice of the Manufacture and Distribution of Coal Gas , 1879

literature

• Entry in Winfried Pötsch, Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists . Harri Deutsch 1989
• TE James: Dictionary of National Biography. Wikisource

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry on isoprene. In: Römpp Online . Georg Thieme Verlag, accessed on January 6, 2015.