Douglas McKie

Douglas McKie (born July 15, 1896 at Tradegar , Monmouthshire , † August 28, 1967 in London ) was a British chemist and chemical historian .

McKie initially wanted to join the military like his father and from 1916 attended the Royal Military College in Sandhurst . He then spent a year and a half in France as a lieutenant with the South Wales Borderers in World War I and was seriously wounded at Passendale in July 1917, but then returned to the military, including as part of the occupation forces in Germany . In 1920 he left the military because of his injuries and began studying chemistry at University College London with a bachelor's degree in 1923. He studied absorption of gases on solids under FG Donnan and received his doctorate in 1927. Before that, however, he had discovered his affinity for chemistry history with Abraham Wolf . In 1934 he left the chemistry faculty and became a lecturer in the history of science (the faculty was officially established at University College in 1936). During World War II he taught chemistry again at the University College of South Wales at Bangor . In 1945 he returned to University College London as a reader for the history of science. In 1957 he was appointed professor there as successor to Herbert Dingle and in 1964 he retired.

He dealt particularly with Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier , about whom he wrote two biographies. He edited Lavoisier's correspondence for the Academie des Sciences in Paris and cataloged Lavoisier's chemical apparatus in the possession of the Comtesse de Chazelles. He also dealt with Joseph Black , Robert Boyle , the history of the Royal Society, Joseph Priestley and the phlogiston theory , among others .

In 1963 he received the Dexter Award . He was a Knight of the Legion of Honor . In 1936 he received an honorary doctorate (Sc.D.) from the University of London.

McKie was one of the founders and editors of the Annals of Science in 1936 . He was one of the founders of the Society for Alchemy and Early Chemistry and from 1959 to 1967 its president and one of the founders of the British Society for the History of Science . He was also a Fellow of the Chemical Society of London and the Royal Society of Arts . In 1958 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Fonts

• Antoine Lavoisier, the Father of Modern Chemistry, London: Victor Gollancz 1935, Archives
• Antoine Lavoisier, Scientist, Economist, Social Reformer 1952
• with NH de. V. Heathcote: The Discovery of Specific and Latent Heat, 1935
• Thomas Cochrane's Notes from Doctor Black's Lectures on Chemistry 1767-1768, 1966
• with JR Partington : Historical studies on Phlogiston Theory, 4 parts, Annals of Science, 1937 to 1939

Web links

• Biography at the ACS, pdf