Divers, Edward

Divers, Edward. "Alexander William Williamson, 1824-1904." Proceedings of the Royal Society 78A (1907) xxiv-xliv. 

J.M. (1913). Obituary notices of fellows deceased Edward Divers, 1837-1912. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A 88 viii—x. 

The Wasa and PEG. Because of storage and preservation problems, as much as possible of the disconnected wooden material from the Wasa wreck site was left on the seabed during the preliminary work to raise the hull. However, divers brought up some pieces, and in 1958 some small sculptures were treated with PEG. The salvage operation leader and head of the naval dockyard, Edward Clason, got written permission from the license holders Mo och Domsjo AB and Centerwall, dated February 9, 1959, to use the PEG method without license cost. 

Kekule told Williamson of his idea—it must have been soon after his arrival, in January or February 1854—and Williamson was enthusiastic. But Kekule had little free time and no laboratory in which to do the work, and so he stalled. Finally Williamson declared, "This must be tried. If you don t do it, 1 will." So, without Stenhouse s permission, Kekule used his boss s lab in the hours before his official duties began at 9 a.m. There was, of course, no way to hide the powerful aromas of sulfur compounds, but Stenhouse let the work continue. Kekule s lab-mate Edward Divers commented, "Stenhouse murmured sometimes at Kekule s giving too much time to it, that was all." On 3 March Kekule reported to Planta that fortunately Stenhouse was currently indisposed, which gave Kekule free rein in the lab. Kekule must have worked efficiently in March, for Kekule s finished paper, "On a New Series of Sulphuretted Acids," was formally presented in the 6 April 1854 meeting of the Royal Society of London. The paper was also published in Liebig s Annalen, and excited interest in the chemical world, as we shall shortly see. 

In the first stage of the institutionalization of chemistry in Japan, foreign teachers of chemistry like Robert William Atkinson and Edward Divers taught in Japanese higher educational institutions, educated the first generation of Japanese chemists, and showed the possible direction of Japanese chemistry studies by their own studies in Japan. Their students were then sent to Europe or the United States to study further. The institutionalization was completed with the establishment of the Tokyo Chemical Society in 1878 and the foundation of Imperial University in Tokyo in 1886. The discovery of the periodic law between 1869 and 1871 and its dissemination in the 1880s coincided with the institutionalization of chemistry in Japan. This factor helped make the appreciation of the periodic system as a basis for chemistry in Japan easier. Most of the first generation of Japanese chemistry professors accepted the periodic law as one of the recent developments in chemistry in Europe without much doubt. 

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