Alexander Crum Brown

Alexander Crum Brown FRSE FRS (26 March 1838 – 28 October 1922) was a Scottish organic chemist.

Born in Edinburgh, the son of Rev Dr John Brown (1784-1858), minister of Broughton Place Church in the east end of Edinburgh's New Town, and Margaret Fisher Crum (d.1841) and half brother of the physician and essayist John Brown, he studied for five years at the Royal High School, succeeded by one year at Mill Hill School in London. In 1854 he entered the universities of University of Edinburgh where he first studied Arts and then of Medicine. He was gold medallist in Chemistry and Natural Philosophy and graduated as M.A. in 1858. Continuing his medical studies, he received the degree of M.D. in 1861. During the same time he read for the science degree of University of London, and in 1862 became the first Doctor of Science at the University of London. After his graduation as Doctor of Medicine in Edinburgh he continued the study of chemistry in Germany, first under Robert Bunsen at University of Heidelberg, and then at University of Marburg under Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe.

In 1863 he returned to the University of Edinburgh to accept the position of an extra-academical lecturer in chemistry. In 1865 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh in 1869, holding the Chair until his retirement in 1908. In the application for this position he was supported by such famous chemists as Baeyer, Beilstein, Bunsen, Butlerov, Erlenmeyer, Hofmann, Kolbe, Volhard and Wöhler. The Crum Brown Chair of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh was established in 1967 in his honour.

...
Wikipedia