Owens College

The British physicist, famous for his discovei y of the electron, was born in Cheetham, near Manchester, on December 18, 1856. He first entered Owens College (later Manchester University) at the early age of fourteen. In 1876 Thomson won a scholarship in Mathematics to Trinity College, Cambridge, and remained a member of the College for the rest of his life. He became a Fellow in 1880, Lecturer in 1883 and Master in 1918, a position he held with great flair until his death on August 30, 1940. 

Frankland provides an early link between London and Manchester chemistry and between British and Continental chemistry. He was the first professor of chemistry at Owens College, in 1851. He had studied with Lyon Playfair at the Royal School of Mines in London, where he became fast friends with the young German student Hermann Kolbe. Frankland went with Kolbe to... 

Frankland left Owens College in 1857 to teach at St. Bartholomew s Hospital in London, and in 1865, he succeeded Hofmann at the Royal School of Mines, when Hofmann left London to return to Germany. Frankland s successor at Owens was Henry Roscoe, who had just returned from studying with Bunsen at Heidelberg and who was the son of a distinguished Lancashire family (and the uncle of Beatrix Potter). 

A letter from Edward Frankland to Henry Armstrong, dated 12 January 1869, reports that the principal of Owens College and Roscoe found Leipzig, on the whole, to be the best of the Continental laboratories they visited. RSL, MM. 10.93. 

In the years following the funeral, Manchester citizens continued to pay tribute to their great natural philosopher. In 1853 a granite monument was erected over Dalton s grave. Scholarships were established in his name at Manchester s new Owens College, and in 1903 the city celebrated his discovery of the atomic theory. It was a fitting tribute to the man who had transformed chemistry. 

THOMSON, J. J. (1856—1940). Joseph John Thomson was an English physicist. At age fourteen, his father sent him to Owens College for preparatory scientific training. His attendance here was important to his career because this college had an outstanding science faculty and it also offered many experimental physics courses. 

I. 138,1888 G. H. Bailey, Studies from the Physical and Chemical Laboratories of Owens College,... 

Dec. 6,1869, Wells, Norfolk, England - Jan. 17,1958, Oxford, England) Chapman studied in Oxford, and then he was a lecturer at Owens College (which later became part of the University of Manchester). In 1907 he returned to Oxford, and led the chemistry laboratories of the Jesus College until his retirement in 1944 [i]. Chapmans research has mostly been focused on photochemistry and chemical kinetics however, he also contributed to the theory of electrical -> double layer [ii]. His treatment of the double layer was very similar to that elaborated by -> Gouy earlier, and what has come to be called the Gouy-Chapman double-layer model [i.iii]. 

The Master talked over his own researches with his students. The whole subject of the"reality of the electron was discussed. There were two Wilsons in his laboratory at the time. Suddenly he turned to C.T.R.—that was the way he addressed Charles Thomson Rees Wilson. This boy, too, had originally come from Owens College. Thomson had been watching him at work with his dust counter. Wilson had noticed that particles of dust acted as nuclei around which moisture condensed as tiny droplets of water when the air was suddenly cooled by expansion. These dust particles were too small to be photographed, but when they were surrounded by droplets of water they became easily visible and could be photographed. He thus devised an ingenious method of counting dust particles of the air. 

This leaves Humphrey (Bedford College) and Smith (Owens College, Manchester). There seem to be no obvious links which would explain how news of the petition reached each of these women. 

Even the Owens College Library was initially off-limits, as a woman student in 1901 later recalled ... 

Of all the university chemistry professors, it was Arthur Smithells,48 Chair of Chemistry at Leeds from 1885 until 1923,49 who had been most active in promoting the science education of girls (see Chap. 1). The explanation for his interest dates back to his last days at Owens College, Manchester, before his appointment at Yorkshire College ... 

Part of his last session (1882) at the Owens College was spent in conducting a course of lectures and practical work on chemistry at the neighbouring [Manchester] Girls High School where he gained his first experience of teaching, an experience... 

Interestingly, at Manchester, it had been the males who were the stool-snatchers in the labs, perhaps Mancunian women students being less assertive, as was expressed in the rhyme A Lady s Lament in the Owens College Union Magazine of 1902 ... 

Following after Williams, Emily Comber Fortey,114 daughter of Henry Fortey, Inspector of Schools (India), was a student at Bristol from 1892, receiving a B.Sc. (London) in 1896. She was awarded a prestigious Science Research Scholarship of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, which she used for research at Owens College, Manchester, over the period 1896-1898. Her research, together with that of the Russian chemist Vladimir Markovnikov, showed that the cyclohexane fractions from American, Galician, and Caucasian crude oil deposits were identical. 

The Editor. (1887). Editorial notes. Iris The Magazine of the Department of Women, The Owens College 5. 

Anon. (1892). The Department for Women. Owens College Magazine 24(3) 92-93. 

Bailey, J. H. (1892). Types of college men — and women VIII the lady student. Owens College Magazine 25(1) 24—25. Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director, the John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester. 

One of Orton s students was Alice Emily Smith. Smith was born on 18 June 1871, daughter of Thomas Smith, Commission Agent of Warrenpoint, County Down, Northern Ireland and she was educated at Crescent House School, Bedford.109 She entered University College of North Wales, Bangor, in 1897 and completed a B.Sc. (London) in chemistry in 1901. Smith was awarded an 1851 Scholarship, which she chose to use from 1901 to 1903 at Owens College, Manchester, where she worked with William Perkin, Jr.,110 her research resulting in four substantial papers. 

Harold attended the Central Board School in Manchester and, at the age of seventeen, was awarded a Manchester Corporation Scholarship. In 1894, he entered Owens College of the federal Victoria University, Manchester, and, three years later, graduated with a B. Sc. with First Class Honours in Chemistry. He was awarded the Levinstein Exhibition fellowship, proceeded to conduct his first researches in organic chemistry under Professor William H, Perkin, Jnr., and received his M. Sc. degree from the Victoria University in 1900, the year of his first publication. 

I should have hesitated to proceed beyond this experimental stage if I had not found at The Owens College a set of students eagerly pursuing work in different branches... 

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