About 40 years ago when I was doing research on the young Japanese men who went to London during the second half of the nineteenth century I came across the.
Alexander William Williamson is the 368th most popular chemist (up from 378th in 2019), the 1,880th most popular biography from United Kingdom (up from 2,185th....
Williamson, Alexander William
(b Wandsworth, London, England, 1 May 1824; d, Hindhead, Surrey, England, 6 May 1904)
organic chemistry.
Although he published little, Williamson was the most influential chemist in Great Britain during the period 1850–1870, two critical decades in which chemists released themselves from the stranglehold of Berzelius’ electrochemical dualism, forged a unitary system of inorganic and organic chemistry, created a rational system of atomic weights, developed concepts of valence and structure, and organized themselves professionally.
In all these changes and developments Williamson was a leader, as researcher, teacher, critic, and elder statesman.
Williamson was the second of three children of Alexander Williamson, a clerk at East India House who was a friend of the economist James Mill, and Antonia McAndrew, a merchant’s daughter.
Throughout his life he was racked by severe physical disabilities: a semiparalyzed left arm, a blind right eye, and