Keir, James

Macquers textbook and his Dictionary made him one of the most authoritative chemists of the century. Yet the translator of the Dictionary, James Keir, clearly expressed a view contrary to Macquers with regard to the rule on the blending of properties. In a footnote, Keir wrote that the case might be just the reverse of that stated by Macquer ... 

It is unfortunate that Keir did not push on with this idea of an element as any body that we have not yet been able to decompose. As we shall see later, this is precisely the definition that comes to be utilized by many later chemists, and constitutes the operational basis for the new nomenclature and ultimately the expression of composition in terms of atomic weights. I know of no earlier advocacy of this idea so clearly stated as this by James Keir. 

We have already seen in Chapter Nine how James Keir, the translator of Macquer s chemical works, conceived the operational idea of chemical simple body. But no one offered a more explicit definition before the new nomenclature than the Irish chemist Richard Kirwan in 1784 ... 

Priestley to James Keir, 4 February 1778, in R. E. Schofield (ed.), A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)- Selected Scientific Correspondence Edited with Commentary (Cambridge, MA The M. I. T. Press, 1966, pp. 163-4. 

J. Priestley, Additional Experiments and Observations Relating to the Principle of Acidity, the Decomposition of Water, and Phlogiston...With Letters to Him on the Subject by Dr Withering and James Keir Esq.) Philosophical Transactions, 81 (1791), pp. 213-22. 

Several members of the Lunar Society were major contributors, the Wedgwoods more prominent than the Watts in this regard. See T. H. Levere, Dr. Thomas Beddoes and the Establishment of his Pneumatic Institution. A Tale of Three Presidents , Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 32 (1977), pp. 41-9. The most extraordinary funding, a bond for 10,000 pounds, came from James Keir in Bond for performance of Covenant. Dr Beddoes to Jas. Keir Wm. Reynolds Esqrs., 27 August 1793, emended to 16 April 1794, National Archives (Kew), MSC 104/41. Keir was also a staunch phlo-gistonist. 

Pierre Joseph Macquer, A Dictionary of Chemistry... Translated from the French by James Keir... The... 

James Keir, An Account of the Life and Writings of T. Day (London, 1791). 

James Keir, The First Part of A Dictionary of Chemistry (Birmingham, 1789). 

James Keir, A Dictionary of Chemistry—Translated from the French, London, 1771. 

VII. A Dictionary of Chemistry. Containing the Theory and Practice of that Science its application to Natural Philosophy, Natural History, Medicine, and Animal Economy. . . [tr. by James Keir], 2 vols. 4°, London, 1771 2 ed. with Appendix, A Treatise on the Various Kinds of Elastic Fluids or Gases, 3 vols. 8°, 1777 (Sotheran Cat. 832 (1932), 387). A copy annotated by Keir shows that he was preparing a new ed., which never appeared (Gurney, Cat. 20 (1958), no. 387). 

Captain James Keir (Edinburgh, 29 September 1735-Birmingham, ii October 1820) graduated M.D. at Edinburgh with a dissertation de attractione... 

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