John Norman Collie

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John Norman Collie

John Norman Collie (born September 10, 1859 in Alderley Edge , † November 1, 1942 ) was a British chemist, mountaineer and explorer. He took part in the first attempt at ascent of Nanga Parbat and climbed for the first time and named numerous mountains in the Canadian Rocky Mountains .

Life

Collie was 1859 in Alderley Edge in the English county of Cheshire was born as the second of four sons. In 1870 his family moved to Clifton near Bristol and he first went to school in Windlesham in the county of Surrey , then from 1873 to the traditional and elite Charterhouse School . His family had made their fortunes by trading cotton, but were financially ruined in 1875 after their warehouses in America burned down as a result of the Civil War . Collie had to leave the Charterhouse School and moved to Clifton College in Bristol, where he came to the conclusion that he was completely unsuitable for classical studies . He then attended University College in Bristol and developed an interest in chemistry.

Collie at University College London

In 1884 Collie obtained a doctorate in chemistry under Johannes Wislicenus in Würzburg ( on the effect of ammonia on acetoacetic ester ). After returning to England he taught at Cheltenham Ladies College for three years and then became assistant to William Ramsay at University College London (UCL). His early work was the study of phosphonium and phosphine derivatives and related ammonium compounds . He later made contributions to the understanding of dehydroacetic acid and described a number of "condensations" by which it is converted into pyridine , orcine and naphthalene derivatives .

Collie was Professor of Organic Chemistry at UCL from 1896 to 1913 and Head of the Faculty of Chemistry from 1913 to 1928. He did research that led to the first x-ray to diagnose diseases. The chemist Ronald Bentley reports that Collie " researched inert gases with Ramsay , constructed the first neon lamp , proposed a dynamic structure for benzene and discovered the first oxonium salt ."

In June 1896 he was elected a member of the Royal Society .

It is believed that Collie Arthur Conan Doyle served as a model for the fictional character Sherlock Holmes , whom he resembled in personality and outward appearance. Even during Collie's lifetime, he was sometimes mistaken for Sherlock Holmes.

Rockclimbing

The Mount Athabasca is one of the first of Collie unclimbed and named mountains in the Canadian Rockies.

Collie had his professional career as a scientist, but his secondary occupation was mountain climbing. He is known among mountaineers for his first ascents in the Cuillin Hills on the Scottish Isle of Skye , but he also climbed mountains in the English Lake District and in the Alps with William Cecil Slingsby and Albert Mummery .

In 1895, Collie, Mummery and the mountaineer Geoffrey Hastings went to the Himalayas to attempt the world's first ascent of the 8,000-meter-high Nanga Parbat . They were years ahead of their time and the mountain claimed the first of its numerous victims: Mummery and two Gurkhas , Ragobir and Goman Singh, were killed by an avalanche , their bodies never found. Collie tells the story of this disastrous expedition in his book From the Himalaya to Skye .

After gaining experience in mountaineering in the Alps, the Caucasus and the Himalayas, he became a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1897 at the invitation of the American mountaineer Charles Fay and spent the summer in the Canadian Rockies . From 1898 to 1911, Collie was five more times in the Canadian Rockies, made 21 first climbs and named more than 30 peaks. He was particularly interested in finding the legendary Hooker and Brown mountains , which are said to be on a forgotten fur trade route through the Rockies and are said to have an altitude of around 5000 meters. In 1903 Collie published together with Hugh Stutfield the standard work on the region Climbs and Explorations in the Canadian Rockies .

Collies grave on the Isle of Skye

Collie died of pneumonia in 1942 after falling into Loch Storr on the Isle of Skye on a fishing trip. He is buried in an old cemetery in Struan on Skye.

Honors and memberships

Works

  • Exploration in the Canadian Rockies: a search for Mount Hooker and Mount Brown . Royal Geographical Society, 1899.
  • Climbing On The Himalaya And Other Mountain Ranges . 1902.
  • From the Himalaya to Skye . 1902.
  • Climbs and exploration in the Canadian Rockies . 1903 (co-author is Hugh Stutfield).

literature

  • Albert Frederick Mummery: My mountain trips in the Alps and in the Caucasus (=  Alpine Classics . Volume 9 ). Bruckmann, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7654-2159-6 (English: My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus .).
  • ECC Baly: John Norman Collie. 1859-1942 . In: Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society . tape 4 , no. 12 , 1943, pp. 329-326 , doi : 10.1098 / rsbm.1943.0007 .
  • William J. Taylor: The snows of yesteryear: J. Norman Collie, mountaineer . Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, Toronto 1973, ISBN 0-03-929953-8 .
  • Christine Mill: Norman Collie, a life in two worlds: mountain explorer and scientist, 1859-1942 . Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen 1987, ISBN 0-08-032456-8 .
  • Ronald Bentley: John Norman Collie: Chemist and Mountaineer . In: Journal of Chemical Education . tape 76 , 1999, pp. 41-34 , doi : 10.1021 / ed076p41 .

Web links

Commons : John Norman Collie  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Bentley: John Norman Collie: Chemist and Mountaineer. 1999
  2. ^ Mill: Norman Collie, a life in two worlds: mountain explorer and scientist, 1859-1942. 1987
  3. ↑ Taylor: The snows of yesteryear: J. Norman Collie, mountaineer. 1973
  4. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of John Norman Collie at academictree.org, accessed on January 28, 2018.
  5. ↑ See the page on Collie of the Faculty of Chemistry at UCL (English)
  6. ↑ a b Baly: John Norman Collie. 1859-1942. 1943
  7. ↑ Entry on Collie; John Norman (1859–1942) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
  8. ↑ Peter J. Garratt, Alwyn Davies: UCL Chemistry Department 1828–1974. Science Reviews 2000 Ltd. 2013. ISBN 978-1-900814-46-1 .
  9. ↑ Simon Thompson: Unjustifiable Risk? The Story of British Climbing. Cicerone Press Limited. 2012. ISBN 978-1-84965-699-3 .
  10. ↑ Collie: Climbing On The Himalaya And Other Mountain Ranges. 2007
personal data
SURNAME Collie, John Norman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Collie, J. Norman; Collie, Norman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist, mountaineer and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Alderley Edge
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 1942