Читать книгу The Right Honourable Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe P.C., D.C.L., F.R.S - T. E. Thorpe - Страница 5

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Henry Roscoe brought his young wife to 10 Powis Place, Great Ormond Street, London, and here on January 7, 1833, his only son, Henry Enfield Roscoe, first saw the light. A daughter, Harriet, was born in 1836.

The young judge had little opportunity of making provision for his family, and on his death they were left with very straitened means. His widow moved with her children into a small cottage at Gateacre, and as she had considerable artistic gifts sought to add to her slender income by teaching water-colour painting at a girls’ school in the vicinity. She also possessed some of the literary power of her distinguished grandfather, and in 1868 published a “Life of Vittoria Colonna,” with admirable translations of the sonnets. She was a strong, vigorous character, devotedly attached to her son and proud of his success in life. Her Manchester friends used playfully to refer to her as “the Mother of Owens College,” and the allusion to her association with its fortunes gave her pleasure. She was always deeply interested in its progress and rejoiced in its success. She died at the age of eighty-seven, falling “like autumn fruit that mellowed long.”

Young Roscoe went for a few years to a preparatory school in the neighbourhood of his home. In 1842 his mother moved her small charges to Liverpool, when he was sent to the High School of the Liverpool Institute, among the earliest of the so-called “modern” schools. He remained here seven years, taking the usual English subjects—mathematics, French, a little Latin and less Greek, and some elementary physical science. The school was furnished with a chemical laboratory—a very unusual provision in those days—and in it he obtained his first lessons in chemical manipulation from William H. Balmain, the discoverer of “luminous paint” and of boron nitride. Balmain, who was one of the early contributors to the then newly founded Chemical Society, in his published account of the latter substance apologizes for his inability to state its exact composition, as he was unable to obtain a better balance than such as he could construct himself “of wood and paper”—a circumstance which throws some light upon the means of instruction in the laboratory which introduced Roscoe to the study of practical chemistry. He always had a grateful recollection of his first instructor, whom he described as a genial fellow, and a stimulating and original teacher. The boy also came under the influence of Hugo Reid—a noteworthy man, and of some reputation at the time as a writer and teacher of natural philosophy—and of W. B. Hodgson, an excellent teacher of English, who afterwards became Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh.

Years afterwards, when the “old boy” had become a person of some consequence in the world, he was invited to distribute the prizes at his school, and told his auditors, in the course of a short address, that he had come across one of his school reports, addressed to his mother, in which it was stated: “Roscoe is a nice boy, but he looks about him too much, and does not know his irregular verbs.” He added that he thought this early habit of looking about him, which had persistently clung to him through life, had possibly done more for him than the irregular verbs.

Roscoe’s mother encouraged his inclination towards chemical pursuits by providing him with a room at home in which he could make his experiments, and such spare cash as he had was devoted to the purchase of chemicals and apparatus. In this manner he early obtained familiarity with the simpler operations of practical chemistry and laid the foundations of that dexterity in manipulation which contributed so greatly to his success as a lecturer.

Roscoe’s forbears on both sides were of Presbyterian or Unitarian stock, and the household naturally moved mainly in Nonconformist circles. These comprised some of the most respected and cultured families in the district—the Booths, Yateses, Martineaus, Taylors, Sandbachs: all well-known names in Lancashire—with some of whom his people were connected by marriage.

In 1848 he was entered at University College, London, at that time the only seat of higher learning and research in England open to men who were refused admittance to the older Universities on denominational grounds. Among the teachers in Gower Street at this period were De Morgan, Francis Newman, Malden, Sharpey, Graham, Lindley, Williamson, Jenner, and Liston. No more remarkable group was to be found in any institution for higher education in England. Among Roscoe’s contemporaries as students were Lister, Langton-Sandford, Farrer-Herschell, Bageot, Jessel, Richard Hutton (who married as first and second wives two of his cousins), Osler, Henry Thompson, and Edward Fry—all names afterwards distinguished in law, literature, and medicine.

Of his teachers at this time, the one who had most influence in shaping his career was undoubtedly Thomas Graham, the chemist. Graham had been elected in 1837, largely through the action of Lord Brougham, as successor to Edward Turner in what was then known as the University of London, founded some nine years previously. Although nervous and hesitating in manner, and with little fluency of speech, Graham was a sound and suggestive teacher, whose lectures were characterized by a philosophic method of exposition, and by accuracy and breadth of knowledge. These were always carefully prepared and well illustrated by experiments. The greater number in the class were, of course, medical students, for in those days there were few followers of pure science, and science faculties and degrees in science were unknown.

Roscoe, in entering Graham’s class-room, found himself, as he says, in a new world. One indication of the eagerness with which he exploited it may be gleaned from the circumstance that the enthusiastic young tyro at the end of the session came out the head of the class and gained the silver medal. His mother and sister soon followed him to town, and the family lived first in Torrington Square and next in Camden Town, where his cousin, Stanley Jevons, the economist, and afterwards one of his colleagues at Owens College, came to reside with them. One of his uncles was Mr. Justice Crompton, who had married into the Fletcher family, and was a great friend of his father. The judge always took a strong paternal interest in his nephew, and would have sent him to Cambridge had he been disposed to go there. The Crompton cousins were, he says, like brothers and sisters to him. It was in their drawing-room in Hyde Park Square that he first met Miss Lucy Potter, his future wife, then a girl of seventeen.

Roscoe now elected to follow chemistry as a career, somewhat to the dismay of his relatives, who, he tells us, imagined he intended “to open a shop with red and blue glass bottles in the window,” such being the external indications of the calling of a chemist in this country. And no wonder they were perturbed, for any one not being registered as a “pharmaceutical chemist,” or as a “chemist and druggist,” who should presume to style himself a chemist was punishable with a fine. Liebig was not altogether well informed of the facts when he wrote to Berzelius that the English chemists were ashamed to call themselves such because the apothecaries had appropriated the name. It was not so much that they were ashamed as they were actually prohibited by law. Although nearly two generations have passed since those days, it may be doubted whether even now the public mind has quite grasped the distinction between a chemist properly so-called and an apothecary.

Having settled upon his life’s work, Roscoe entered the Birkbeck Laboratory at University College, then under the direction of Williamson, whom Graham had just brought over from Paris, where he had been working with Laurent and Gerhardt. Roscoe had the highest appreciation of the genius and power of Williamson, and pays grateful homage to his memory in the following extract from his Autobiography:

At the time I entered the laboratory Williamson was engaged in the researches which have made his name a household word to chemists all the world over. His was a mind of great originality, and his personality was a most attractive one. And, despite his physical disabilities—for he lost an eye and the proper use of his left arm in early childhood—he was a diligent and accurate worker. Ardently devoted to his science, he infected all who worked under him with the same feeling. And his pupils willingly own that much of the success that they may have met with in after years was due to his teaching and example. I well remember the feelings of interest he aroused as he each day came down to the laboratory brimful of new ideas. First it was his explanation of the theory of etherification, of which he proved the truth by preparing the mixed ethers, thereby ascertaining the general constitution of alcohols and ethers, and laying one of the foundation-stones of modern chemistry. Next it was his well-known paper on the constitution of salts, in which he enunciated principles which have since been generally adopted. Then came his views on atomic motion and interchange, the first definite statement of a series of chemical phenomena which in the hands of Van ’t Hoff and others have become of the highest import. … He clearly foresaw the principles upon which the modern development of the steam-engine depends, and though he failed for want of constructive skill, he pointed the way which engineers have since followed with conspicuous success.

In his second year in the Birkbeck Laboratory Roscoe became Williamson’s private assistant, and took part in his researches, and when Graham accepted the Mastership of the Mint, and Williamson succeeded to the chair at University College, Roscoe was made lecture assistant. Williamson had the idea at that time of publishing an abridged translation of Gerhardt’s Chimie Organique, for the benefit of English students, which Roscoe was to prepare, but nothing came of the project.

Graham, who had been commissioned to send out an assayer to the Sydney Mint, offered Roscoe the position. The salary was very tempting, but as his mother and sister had no desire to go to Australia, the offer was declined, and his cousin Stanley Jevons, who had passed through the Birkbeck Laboratory, was sent in his stead.

It was in recognition of Roscoe’s association with Williamson that nearly forty years afterwards he was deputed, on behalf of the subscribers, to present the portrait of his master which now hangs in University College.

Roscoe took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in the University of London, with Honours in chemistry, in 1853, and as he was now more than ever determined to follow a career of science, he decided to enlarge his experience by a course of study in a continental laboratory, as was then the usual custom. Of the great leaders of British chemical science in the first half of the nineteenth century—Dalton, Thomson, Davy, Faraday, Graham—only Thomson and Graham, and to a limited extent Dalton, were in a position to exert any influence as teachers, and even in their case there was little provision of instruction in practical chemistry.

The older English universities had practically nothing of the kind; their disciplines offered no encouragement to the study of chemical science. The university which prides itself on having afforded a home to Boyle extended no opportunity to a man to make any research unless he found his own laboratory and apparatus. Dr. Liveing started the first laboratory for students in Cambridge at his own expense in 1852, hiring a cottage in the town for the purpose. On the other hand, at that time, thanks to the influence of the French school of chemists; of Berzelius in Sweden; Liebig, Wöhler, Mitscherlich, and the two Roses in Germany, systematic instruction in chemistry was being actively pursued on the Continent, and nearly every leading University abroad could show a more or less well-equipped laboratory, and a body more or less large of eager and enthusiastic investigators. Accordingly, at this period, aspirants for chemical fame in this country naturally turned to one or other of the chemical schools in France or Germany to seek there what they were unable to find at home.

Roscoe elected to go to Bunsen, who had recently been called from Breslau to Heidelberg in succession to Leopold Gmelin, the author of the well-known “Handbuch.” Bunsen had already won for himself a European reputation by his masterly investigation of the cacodyl compounds, by the improvements he had effected in gasometric methods, by his investigations on the chemistry of the blast-furnace, his invention of the carbon-zinc battery and photometer, and his inquiries into the chemical aspects of the volcanic and pseudo-volcanic phenomena of Iceland.

It is perhaps idle to speculate why Roscoe should have left Williamson at the most fruitful period of his career, and when, under his stimulus, organic chemistry was apparently about to enter upon a great development in this country. But the probability is that then, as afterwards, the problems of organic chemistry and the purely speculative aspects of the science had few attractions for him, and that he saw in the many-sided nature of Bunsen’s work, in its eminently practical character, and the precision of its quantitative methods, much that appealed to his inclination towards the operative, and especially the determinative side of chemistry, for Bunsen was pre-eminently a master of manipulation, as every one who aspired to a professional career in chemistry and who hoped to direct a chemical laboratory fully recognized.

Roscoe, with his mother and sister, who elected to keep house for him, reached Heidelberg in the autumn of 1853 with an introduction to von Mohl, the Professor of International Law, with whose family they became well acquainted. One of the daughters, Anna von Mohl, was the second wife of Helmholtz. By von Mohl he was made known to Bunsen.