William Gregor

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William Gregor (born December 25, 1761 in Trewarthenick , Cornwall , England, † June 11, 1817 in Creed , Cornwall) was an English clergyman and mineralogist .

Life

His parents were Francis and Mary Gregor (née Copley). He attended the Bristol Grammar School. In 1784 he took his master's degree at St. John's College , Cambridge, and that same year moved to Diptford , Devon , where he was vicar at St Mary's Church. He married Charlotte Anne Gwatkin in 1790 and moved with her to a rectory in Creed , where he also analyzed many different minerals that he had discovered in Cornwall.

In 1791 Gregor found a previously unknown metal in a mineral from the Menaccan Valley (Cornwall) that he called Menachine . When Martin Heinrich Klaproth also discovered a new metal in a "red Schörl" ( rutile ) in 1795 , he named it titanium after the titans from Greek mythology. In 1797 it was recognized that both metals were identical, but the name titanium, which was given later, prevailed. The mineral, which Gregor identified as iron-titanium oxide (FeTiO 3 ), was initially named menaccanite (also menachanite , menakanite or menakan ), but was then referred to as ilmenite after Adolph Theodor Kupffer (1799-1865) .

Between 1796 and 1800 Gregor found other minerals in which titanium occurs, such as B. in a corundum variety from Tibet and in tourmalines from a tin mine.

Reverend William Gregor died of tuberculosis at the age of 55 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Hans Lüschen: The names of the stones. The mineral kingdom in the mirror of language . Ott Verlag, Thun and Munich 1968, p. 332 (titanium) .
  2. http://www.pse118-online.de/Entdecker/Gregor.htm