George Fownes
George Fownes (born May 14, 1815 in London , † January 31, 1849 in Brompton , Kent ) was an English chemist.
Fownes decided to devote himself to chemistry at the age of 17 and attended a philosophical class at the Western Literary Institution in London, where Thomas Everett and Henry Watts taught. From 1837 he was in the laboratory of the lecturer in chemistry at Middlesex Hospital Thomas Everett. He received his doctorate in 1841 under Justus von Liebig in Gießen, where he was from 1839. In 1840 he was back in London and assistant in the laboratory of Thomas Graham , with whom he became friends. He was a lecturer at Charing Cross Hospital and from 1842 he was a chemistry professor at the Pharmaceutical Society, but was succeeded by Everett as a lecturer in chemistry at Middlesex Hospital that same year. He gave this up in 1845 for health reasons, but was from 1846 professor at University College London (director of the newly founded Birkbeck Laboratory) on the recommendation of Graham. He was also secretary of the Chemical Society in London. In 1847 he was in Barbados to relax . He died of a cold in his parents' home on his return to England.
Fownes was known for studies in organic chemistry. In 1845 he named the furfural isolated in 1821 as furforol. He obtained it through the action of sulfuric acid on bran (Latin name furfur, the ending -ol came from oleum, oil). From this he synthesized furfuramide (called furfurin by him) through the action of ammonia, which was considered to be the first synthesis of a vegetable alkaline organic compound. He published it in 1845 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. There he also published his discovery of a new organic base (hydrobenzamide), which he called benzeline and obtained from bitter almond oil. He found phosphates in volcanic rocks, which was important for considering the effects of fertilizers.
In 1842 he received the Royal Agricultural Society of England Prize for his essay On the Food of Plants and in 1844 the Actonian Prize for Chemistry as Exemplifies the Wisdom and Beneficence of God , founded in 1838 . The prize was endowed with £ 105 (100 guineas ). In early 1844 he gave six lectures on The Chemistry of Vegetable Life at the London Institution. In 1845 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Royal Medal he received in 1847.
His textbook A Manual of Elementary Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical from 1844 saw many editions even after his death (up to the 12th in 1872). The later editions were overseen by Henry Bence Jones , August Wilhelm von Hofmann and Henry Watts.
literature
- James Riddick Partington , A History of Chemistry, Macmillan 1972, Volume 4, pp. 270-271
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fownes, George |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 14, 1815 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 31, 1849 |
| Place of death | Brompton (London) |