This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Alexander Crum Brown is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Alexander Crum Brown FRS (26 March 1838 - 28 October 1922) was a Scottish organic chemist.
Born in Edinburgh, he studied at the Royal High School, and in London and Leipzig, before returning to take a teaching post at the University of Edinburgh in 1863. In 1865 he became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh University in 1869, holding the Chair until his retirement in 1908. The Chair of Chemistry at the university still bears his name today.
Crum Brown's pioneering work was in the development of a system of representing chemical compounds in diagrammatic form. In 1864 he began to draw pictures of molecules, in which he enclosed the symbols for atoms in circles, and used broken lines to connect the atoms together in a way that satisfied each atom's valence. The results of his influential work were published in The Journal of the Chemical Society of London in 1865.
He discovered the carbon double bond in ethylene, which was to have important implications for the modern plastics industry. He also made significant contributions to pharmacology, and worked in the fields of physiology, phonetics, mathematics and crystallography.
Crum Brown died in 1922.
External links
- Web pages on Crum Brown at University of Edinburgh
- Obituary in Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions, 1923, volume 123, pages 3422 - 3431 (with pictures)
 |
This article about an British chemist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 |
This biographical article about a Scottish scientist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 8 October 2008, at 19:30.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Alexander Crum Brown".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.