Phillips, one of his oldest friends, who pre-deceased him by one year. The
journal was, in 1827, purchased by Mr. Richard Taylor, and was merged in
the "Philosophical Magazine." In 1817, he was appointed lecturer on chemistry in the university of Glasgow; and in 1818, at the instance of the late
Duke of Montrose, Chancellor of that institution, the appointment was made
a professorship with a small salary under the patronage of the Crown. As soon
after his appointment as he was enabled to obtain a laboratory, he commenced
his researches into the atomic constitution of chemical bodies, and produced an
amount of work unparalleled in the whole range of the science, in 1825, by
the publication of his "Attempt to Establish the First Principles of Chemistry
by Experiment," in 2 vols. It contained " the result of many thousand experiments, conducted with as much care and precision as it was in his power to
employ." In this work he gives the specific gravities of all the important
gases, ascertained by careful experiment. The data thus ascertained were often
disputed and attacked in strong but unphilosophical terms, as they tended to
supersede previous experimental deductions; but the excellent subsequent
determinations of specific gravities by Dumas, which were made at the request
of Dr. Thomson, after that distinguished chemist had visited him at Glasgow
in 1840, fully substantiated the greater accuracy of Dr. Thomson's numbers
over those which preceded him, and in most cases furnished an identity of
result. The atomic numbers given in his "First Principles" as the result
of his labours, were the means of a vast number of experiments made by himself and pupils, the data of which still exist in his series of note-books. They
all tended to the result that the atomic weights of bodies are multiples by a
whole number of the atomic weight of hydrogen a canon confirmed to a great
extent by the recent experiments of French and German chemists, and which
he himself was the first to point out in the case of phosphorus. That the subject of our memoir was frequently in error in his experiments is not attempted
to be denied; for, as the great Liebig has said, it is only the sluggard in chemistry who commits no faults; but all his atomic weights of important
bodies have been confirmed. After the publication of this work, he devoted
himself to the examination of the inorganic kingdom of nature, purchasing
and collecting every species of mineral obtainable, until his museum, now
(1855) at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, which he has left behind him,
became not only one of the noblest mineral collections in the kingdom, but a
substantial monument of his taste and of his devotion to science. The results
of his investigation of minerals were published in 1836, in his "Outlines of Mineralogy and Geology," in 2 vols., and contained an account of about fifty
new minerals which he had discovered in a period of little more than ten years.
In 1830-1, Dr. Thomson published his "History of Chemistry," a masterpiece of learning and research. During these feats of philosophic labour, the
eyes of the community were attracted to Glasgow as the source from which
the streams of chemistry flowed, the class of chemistry and the laboratory being flocked to as to fountains of inspiration.
It would be a great omission not to mention that it was Dr. Thomson who introduced a system of giving annual reports on the progress of science in his "Annals of Philosophy;" the first of these was published in 1813, and the last m 1819. These reports were characterized by his usual perspicuity and love of suum cuique which distinguished his conduct through life, and were composed with a mildness of criticism far more conducive to the dignity of the
