William Brownrigg

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Portrait of William Brownrigg

William Brownrigg (* March 24, 1711 July / April 4,  1712 greg. , According to other information July 13, 1711 / March 24,  1712 greg. In High Close Hall, Cumberland ; † January 6, 1800 in Ormathwaite , Lake District ) was a British chemist and doctor. He described platinum as an independent element and researched mine gases, the composition of air and carbon dioxide.

life and work

Brownrigg was an apprentice pharmacist in Carlisle , studied two years in London with a surgeon and medicine at the University of Leiden . His teachers there included Herman Boerhaave , Adriaan van Royen , Bernhard Siegfried Albinus and Willem Jacob 's Gravesande . He received his doctorate in Leiden in 1737 and was then a doctor in the port city of Whitehaven in Cumberland. In 1741 he married Mary Spedding, whose father and uncle managed coal mines for the locally influential Lowther family.

He published and experimented on mine gas (methane and coal dust). He collected the gas via lead lines and suggested using it as a luminous gas. He also found a method to predict the danger of methane explosions in mines with a barometer and was therefore often consulted by mine owners. The presentation of the gas to the Royal Society brought him acceptance into the Society, but he published little about it because he was preparing a major work on it that did not appear. Brownrigg also examined mineral waters after a spa stay on the continent (Bad Pyrmont, Spa). In 1741 (published in the Philos. Transactions of the Royal Society ), he recognized that the gas (carbon dioxide) contained in it also occurs in smoke from coal fires (just as sulphurous mineral waters are related to sulfur vapors). With this he discovered the composition of air from different components and the nature of carbonic acid . He was influenced by Stephen Hales (experiments to fix gases in solids), Robert Boyle , Johan Baptista van Helmont and, as far as mineral water was concerned, by Friedrich Hoffmann . His medical background (theories of exhalation of the human body) also played a role. Because of its relative isolation and fragmentary publications, its priority in the chemistry of gases was forgotten, and its results were rediscovered by Joseph Black and others (in the case of carbonic acid by Joseph Priestley around 1768). Henry Cavendish , however, probably knew his work.

He found in 1774 that calcium and iron carbonate can be dissolved by carbon dioxide dissolved in water. For these investigations he received the Copley Medal in 1776.

A sample of platinum ore that had been smuggled from Colombia via Jamaica and was made available to him in 1741 by Charles Wood (1702–1774), who set up the ironworks in which Brownrigg was involved in Wales and previously managed mines in Jamaica, led to the incoming Investigation of the metal (partly with Wood) and publications 1749/50 in the Phil. Trans. Of the Royal Society. Among other things, they found that it did not react with the known acids and was therefore the closest of the known elements to gold.

As a doctor, he published in 1771 on how to counter the outbreak of epidemics (on the occasion of a plague epidemic on the continent, which then did not reach England) and he was also active in business (development of iron smelting in Wales). In 1771 Benjamin Franklin visited him at his home (inherited from his father) in Ormathwaite, Lake District, where he retired. With Franklin he made an experiment to smooth the waves in Lake Derwent Water by oil during storms.

In 1748 he published a book on salt production (hoping to make Britain more independent in this area).

He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and received its Copley Medal .

literature

  • JV Beckett: Dr William Brownrigg, FRS: physician, chemist and country gentleman . In: Notes Rec. R. Soc. , 31 (1977), pp. 255-271, JSTOR 531830 .
  • JV Beckett: Coal and Tobacco: the Lowthers and the economic development of West Cumberland, 1660-1760 . Cambridge University Press, 1981
  • George Thomas Bettany:  Brownrigg, William . In: Leslie Stephen (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Volume 7:  Brown - Burthogge. , MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1886, p. 85 (English).
  • Joshua Dixon: The literary life of William Brownrigg. To which are added An account of the coal mines near Whitehaven: and Observations on the means of preventing epidemic fevers. Longman & Rees, 1801 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  • Winfried Pötsch u. a .: Lexicon of important chemists . Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-8171-1055-3 .
  • J. Russell-Wood: The scientific work of William Brownrigg, MD, FRS (1711-1800) , Part 1, Annals of Science 6, 1950, pp. 436-447, Part 2, Volume 7, 1951, pp. 77- 94, part 3, pp. 199-206
  • Obituary. In: Gentleman's Magazine , Volume 70, 1800, pp. 386-388 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  • Jean Ward, Joan Yell (Eds.): The medical casebook of William Brownrigg, MD, FRS (1712-1800) of the town of Whitehaven in Cumberland. In: Med. Hist. Suppl. , 13, 1993, XI-176, PMC 2557483 (free full text).
  • Herbert T. Pratt: Brownrigg, William. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herbert T. Pratt: Brownrigg, William. In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  2. ^ JV Beckett: Dr William Brownrigg, FRS: physician, chemist and country gentleman , Notes Rec. R. Soc. 1977, 31: 255-271, JSTOR 531830 .
  3. ↑ On the Uses of a Knowledge of Mineral Exhalations when applied to discover the Principles and Properties of Mineral Waters, the Nature of Burning Fountains, and those Poisonous Lakes called Avemi .
  4. ↑ Leslie Tomory William Brownrigg's papers on fire-damps , Royal Society Publ., 2014, Online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / royalsocietypublishing.org  
  5. ↑ He was also related to Brownrigg.
  6. ↑ In 1993, Jean E. Ward published his medical case reports and records ( The Medical Casebook of William Brownrigg , Wellcome Inst. History Medicine), including one of the earliest descriptions of puerperal fever in Britain.
personal data
SURNAME Brownrigg, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1712 or April 4, 1712
PLACE OF BIRTH High Close Hall , Cumberland
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1800
Place of death Ormathwaite , Lake District