John Read (chemist)

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John Read (born February 17, 1884 in Maiden Newton , Somerset , † January 21, 1963 at St Andrews ) was a British chemist ( organic chemistry ) and chemical historian.

Read obtained his chemistry degree from Finsbury Technical College in London in 1904 , where he was a demonstrator. In 1905 he went to Zurich on a three-year scholarship from the City of London and received his doctorate there in 1907 under Alfred Werner on coumarin and its acidic derivatives. Werner also became interested in stereochemistry . He then returned to London and received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of London in 1907 . He went to William Jackson Pope at the University of Manchester , where he taught chemistry and did research on optical activity. In 1908 he followed Pope to Cambridge as an assistant. For joint work on stereochemistry, he received an honorary MA there in 1912. In 1916 he went to Australia as a professor at the University of Sydney and successor to Robert Robinson . There he dealt with organic bromine compounds and piperiton . After he was on a sabbatical in England in 1922 , he accepted a call to the Purdie Chair of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews in 1923 , where he was a popular teacher and lectured to a wider audience. He died while riding a bicycle near his home, St Andrews.

He dealt with the history of chemistry (especially the history of organic chemistry and alchemy) and organic chemistry (stereochemistry, optical activity). He has also published about life in Australia and plays in his native Somerset dialect.

In 1959 he received the Dexter Award . He was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1935) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1924) and an honorary doctorate (D. Sc.) From Cambridge University. In 1948 he was President of Section B of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . From 1935 to 1938 he was on the Council of the Chemical Society .

Fonts

  • The Rise and Development of Organic Chemistry 1919
  • A Study of Historical Chemistry 1922
  • A Short Course of Practical Organic Chemistry, 1924
  • A Text-Book of Organic Chemistry, Historical, Structural, and Economics, 1926, 1934, 1958
  • An Introduction to Organic Chemistry, 1931, 1961
  • Prelude to Chemistry: An Outline of Alchemy, Its Literature and Relationships, 1936
  • Historical St. Andrews and Its University 1939, 1957
  • Explosives 1942 (also translated into Spanish)
  • The Alchemist in Life, Literature and Art 1947
  • Humor and Humanism in Chemistry 1947
  • Through Alchemy to Chemistry, London: G. Bell 1957 (Dover 1995 as From alchemy to chemistry )
  • A Direct Entry to Organic Chemistry 1948 (German translation 1950, Italian translation 1952)

He was co-editor of the journal Chymia and the Monographs on Modern Chemistry at Bell Verlag.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 1, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Read, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemical historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Maiden Newton , Somerset
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1963
Place of death at St Andrews