William Crookes
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Sir William Crookes OM PRS |
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Sir William Crookes in 1906
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| Born |
17 June 1832 London, England, UK |
| Died | 4 April 1919 (aged 86) London, England, UK |
| Citizenship | British |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields | Physical chemistry |
| Known for | Thallium |
| Influenced | J. K. F. Zöllner |
| Notable awards |
Royal Medal (1875) Davy Medal (1888) Albert Medal (1899) Copley Medal (1904) Elliott Cresson Medal (1912) |
Sir William Crookes OM PRS (17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was an English chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube which was made in 1875. Crookes was the inventor of the Crookes radiometer, which today is made and sold as a novelty item. Late in life, he became interested in spiritualism, and became the president of the Society for Psychical Research.
Crookes made a career of being a meteorologist and fierce lecture giver at multiple studies and courses. Crookes worked in chemistry and physics. His experiments were notable for the originality of their design. He executed them skillfully. His interests, ranging over pure and applied science, economic and practical problems, and psychiatric research, made him a well-known personality. He received many public and academic honors. Crookes's life was one of unbroken scientific activity.
William Crookes (later Sir William Crookes) was born in London, the eldest of 16 siblings. His father, Joseph Crookes, was a tailor of north-country origin, at that time living with his second wife, Mary Scott Lewis Rutherford Johnson.
From 1850 to 1854 he filled the position of assistant in the college, and soon embarked upon original work. It wasn't in organic chemistry which the focus of his teacher, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, might have been expected to lead him towards, but into new compounds of selenium. These were the subject of his first published papers, 1851. He worked with Manuel Johnson at the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford in 1854, where he adapted the recent innovation of wax paper photography to machines built by Francis Ronalds to continuously record meteorological parameters. In 1855 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Chester Diocesan Training College.
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