Maxwell Simpson

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Maxwell Simpson (born March 15, 1815 in Beech Hill , County Armagh , † February 26, 1902 in London ) was an Irish chemist.

Simpson first studied medicine from 1832 at the University of Dublin (Trinity College) with the degree in 1837 and turned, after he heard lectures from Jean-Baptiste Dumas in Paris , to study chemistry at University College London . He was back in Dublin in 1845, earned his bachelor's degree in medicine (BM) in 1847 and became a chemistry professor at Park Street Medical School in Dublin. From 1851 to 1853 he studied in Germany with Hermann Kolbe in Marburg and Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg. In 1856 he resigned his professorship in Dublin and went to Charles Adolphe Wurtz in Paris. In 1859 he set up his own chemistry laboratory in Dublin, went back to Wurtz in Paris in 1867 and then went to London, where he worked as an examiner. From 1872 until his retirement in 1891 he was a professor at Queen's College in Cork .

He made a name for himself through an improved nitrogen determination in organic compounds compared to Justus von Liebig and Jean-Baptiste Dumas (1854), which became a standard method. In a series of works he has been able to clarify the structure of sugar alcohols and he is known for organic syntheses, such as that of polybasic acids from cyanides. He dealt with halogen compounds of alkanes and showed in 1856 that glycerine was a trihydric alcohol of a C3 compound (and not a C2 compound, as was assumed at the time).

In 1862 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society .

literature

  • Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989, p. 397f
  • Desmond Reilly: Contributions of Maxwell Simpson (1815-1902) to Aliphatic Chemical Synthesis, Chymia, Vol. 4, 1953, pp. 159-170

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to Pötsch u. a., Lexicon of important chemists, p. 398, conversion of ethanedibromide and propanedibromide to the corresponding cyanides ( nitriles ) and then saponification to the corresponding di- or tri-basic acids (1860)
  2. ^ Pötsch, Lexicon of important chemists
personal data
SURNAME Simpson, Maxwell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish chemist
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Beech Hill , County Armagh
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1902
Place of death London