William Bird Herapath
William Bird Herapath (born February 28, 1820 in Bristol , † October 12, 1868 ibid) was a British medic, physicist and chemist.
Live and act
He was the son of the chemist and toxicologist William Herapath (1796–1868), who was a professor in Bristol, was active there on the city council and appeared as a forensic toxicologist in court. Herapath studied at the University of London with a bachelor's degree in medicine (MB) in 1844. At the same time, he acquired a licentiate as a pharmacist in 1843. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and was then a surgeon at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and St. Peter's Hospital in Bristol, where he received his doctorate (MD) in 1851.
He has published on both medicine and chemistry and physics. In 1852, when iodine was added to the urine of dogs that had previously consumed quinine , he found green crystals with unusual optical properties - they were suitable as polarizers or polarizing filters. He called it Herapathit (quinine iodine sulfate) - and since it is z. B. could replace tourmaline as polarizer in Nicol's prism , he also called it artificial tourmaline - and patented it. He also analyzed the optical properties of the chlorophyll of different plant species, examined strychnine compounds and constructed a soldering tube for organic analysis. In forensics he developed spectroscopic methods (sometimes under the microscope) for analyzing blood spots.
In 1854 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1859 of the Royal Society in London.
He was the cousin of John Herapath .
Publications
- Address on chemistry: in its relations to medicine and its collateral sciences
- On the manufacture of large available crystals of sulphate of iodo-quinine (herapathite)
- On the chemical constitution and atomic weight of the new polarizing crystals produced from quinine
- Researches on the cinchona alkaloid
- On the genus Synapta, with some new British species
- Micro-spectroscopy: results of spectrum analysis
literature
- Winfried Pötsch u. a. Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989
Web links
- Literature by and about William Bird Herapath in the WorldCat bibliographic database
Individual evidence
- ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 18, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Herapath, William Bird |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British chemist, physicist and medical professional |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 28, 1820 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bristol |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 12, 1868 |
| Place of death | Bristol |