John Percy

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John Percy

John Percy (born March 23, 1817 in Nottingham , † June 19, 1889 in London ) was an English doctor, chemist and dedicated himself as a technician to metallurgy .

Live and act

Percy was a son of the lawyer Henry Percy. He spent his school days at a private school in Southampton before he - again in his hometown - attended medical and scientific lectures at a high school with William Grisenthwaite . Passionate about chemistry, Percy wanted to become a chemist, but his father wanted him to study medicine. In April 1834 Percy therefore went to Paris with his brother Edmund.

After his first impressions in medical school, Percy became a student of Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac , Louis Jacques Thénard and Adrien Henri Laurent de Jussieu . At the suggestion of his teachers, he went on study trips through Switzerland and southern France in 1836 , from which he brought back many mineralogical and botanical samples. In the autumn of the same year he went to the University of Edinburgh , where he studied a. a. at Charles Bell . In 1838 he successfully completed this course with a Dr. med. to lock. His dissertation on the changes in the brain caused by alcohol intoxication was awarded a gold medal. During his stay in Edinburgh he became friends a. a. with Eward Forbes .

In June 1839 he married in Birmingham Grace Mary († 1880), a daughter of John Edward Piercey of Warley Hall. In the same year Percy was appointed as a doctor at Queen's Hospital (Birmingham), but he never practiced as a doctor there, only lecturing on organic and pathological chemistry at the affiliated Queen's College .

At the time, Percy was almost exclusively interested in the smelting and other metalworking processes of the local industry. From 1846 he researched together with David Forbes (1828–1876) and William Hallowes Miller (1801–1880); One focus was on crystallized slag .

In 1847 Percy was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society . He was also a member of the Athenaeum and Garrick Club .

In addition to metal, he also dealt with the work processes in glassworks ; u. a. he tried to optimize and further develop the work of Adolf Patera (1819-1894) in Joachimsthal and Russell in the USA .

In 1851 Percy was accepted as a Fellow in the Geological Society of London and appointed as lecturer for metallurgy at the Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts, which was founded in the same year . There he made the acquaintance of Henry Thomas de la Bèche .

From 1851 Percy lived with his wife in London in a stately estate on Gloucester Crescent in Hyde Park . He died on June 19, 1889 at the age of 72 in London, where he found his final resting place.

Honors

  • 1876: Bessemer Medal
  • 1887: Millar Prize
  • 1889: Albert Medal

Works (selection)

  • Experiments on the presence of alcohol in the ventricles of the brain after poisoning by that liquid . 1839.
  • On the manufacture of Russian sheet iron . London 1871.
  • On the metallurgical treatment and assaying of gold ores . 2nd ed. London 1853.
  1. On fuel, copper, zinc, and brass .
  2. On iron and steel .
  3. On lead .
  4. On silver and gold .
    1. The study of metallurgical processes in general and slags, the study of fuels and refractory materials as introduction, and the metallurgy of copper, zinc and the alloy of both . 1862
    2. Detailed handbook of metallurgy . 1864/88 (3 vol.)
    3. The metallurgy of lead and the separation of silver from lead . 1872.
    4. The metallurgy of silver and gold . 1881.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Named after the engineer Henry Bessemer (1813–1898).
  2. ↑ Awarded by the Institution of Civil Engineers .
  3. ↑ Awarded by the Royal Society of Arts .
personal data
SURNAME Percy, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English doctor, chemist and metallurgist
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Nottingham
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1889
Place of death London