Westminster Abbey

Faraday s activity slowed after 1850, and, in 1865, a progressive loss of memoi y forced his complete retirement. He died in 1867 and he was buried, not in Westminster Abbey, but perhaps more befitting his egalitarian ideals, in Highgate Cemetei y, London. 

In the period following the War of the Spanish Succession of 1714, Newton enjoyed a reputation as the most important natural philosopher of his day. His scientific output during the last twenty years of his life was restricted to the revision of his major works and in defending himself against his many critics. In his private life, he was modest, generous, and given to simple tastes however was buried with great fanfare in Westminster Abbey. 

Rutherford continued to do research until his death, but the proton was his last big discovery. It was not, however, his last big honor. In 1931, the New Zealand country boy was raised to the peerage with the official name of Ernest, Lord Rutherford of Nelson. After his death six years later, he was awarded one last honor. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where he keeps company with Isaac Newton and a handful of other great British scientists. 

In 1656 a book called The Art of Simpling by William Coles claimed, "The common people formerly gathered the leaves of Elder on the last day of April, which to disappoint the charmes of witches, they had affixed to their doores and windowes. I doe not desire any to pin their faithes upon these reports, but only let them know there are such which they may believe as they please." It is said that for this reason, elder was planted outside Westminster Abbey. 

Rutherford died of a strangulated hernia on October 19,1937, at the age of 66. On October 21 his remains were cremated. His ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey among the remains of England s other great scientists, including Newton. When J. J. Thomson died in 1940, his remains were placed next to those of Rutherford, the man who had disproved his theory of the atom. 

According to J. J. Thomson, Lord Rutherford s death on October 19, 1937, just on the eve of his having in the High-Tension Laboratory means of research far more powerful than those with which he had already obtained results of profound importance, is, I think, one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Science (101, 102). Lord Rutherford was the first scientist born in the overseas dominions to be buried in Westminster Abbey, beside the graves of Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, Charles Darwin, and Sir John Herschel. 

Figure 1.1. Whtt by Chantrey in Suspension, c. 1974. Originally in Westminster Abbey, the statue was left behind when the Transport Museum, where it had been housed from I960, moved from Clapham to York. (U.K National Archives, Authors Photo)...

Early characterizations of Watt as a chemist extended at least to the early phases of his monumental and textual canonization as the mechanical Watt . This picture of him is a little-remarked feature of the panegyric surrounding the 1824 meeting at which the subscription was opened for the monument in Westminster Abbey. We have noted that Sir Humphry Davy in his speech to the meeting emphasized Watt s chemical credentials. Thomas Hodgskin, writing in the Chemist, was clear on the point ... 

She shook her head. In Westminster Abbey, you must wear your finest. And your black-and-white petticoat. First thing in the morning, I will buy new ostrich feathers for your hat. ... 

He sighed and straightened himself so that we lay like a couple of knights on their slabs in Westminster Abbey. It would be a very good thing for all of us, Em, if you learned to let the past stay in the past. Lord, how would it be if we all went round tearing our hair out because at some time someone had died. ... 

Shales tucked my hand under his arm, and we began to walk across the front of the nave into the side chapel, back to the main aisle, down to the door, as if we were in Westminster Abbey and he was moving me apart from a crowd of people. This was an explosion, he said more calmly, a violent reaction between two or more volatile substances. It is not the same as fire. ... 

He died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937, and his ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey, next to Lord Kelvin and just west of Sir Isaac Newton s tomb. 

The museum trustees received requests for the safe-keeping of items of outstanding importance from numerous institutions and private individuals, and the quarry soon became a fabulous national treasure-house. Apan from artefacts from Bloomsbury and Kensington, Westwood also held collections from the Bodleian Library, the Imperial War Museum, and the Free French Museum of National Antiquities. Among the individual items to spend the war years in Wiltshire were the Rubens Ceiling from the Whitehall banqueting hall, the Crown Jewels, the Charles I statue from Whitehall and the bronze screen from the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey. 

John Cremer, a fourteenth-century abbot who lived in Westminster, was reputed to have joined Raymond Lully in alchemical works in Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. Thomas Norton, author of the Ordinall of Akhimy, began writing this famous work in 1477. The reputed Basil Valentine is mentioned later in our Chemical History Tour and also by Read. Vulcan is the god of fire. Arms of Vulcan refers to fire as an instrument of chemical change. The picture depicts an immediate proximity between a chemical laboratory and a chemical library—the duality of practice and theory. Although the American Chemical Society recommends location of a university chemical research library in the chemistry laboratory building, it is unlikely that they have quite this closeness in mind. 

The British also struck a special medal to commemorate Queen Elizabeth IPs coronation on 2 June 1953. It depicts the arrival of the throne at the British Isles. The English kept this Coronation Stone, Stone of Scone, or Stone of Destiny, in the base of the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey. The official Westminster Abbey guide labels the Coronation Stone as Jacob s pillar-stone. Jacob laid his head on this Stone when he had the famous dream of a ladder reaching to Heaven. " ... 

The Coronation Stone is very important to Danite Britain because the Book of Daniel represents God s kingdom as a stone. Underling the importance of the Coronation Stone was the precautions taken for its safety in World War II. In 1940, when the German invasion threatened England, the British Government removed the stone from Westminster Abbey to a secret hiding place and sent the details of its concealment to Canada s Prime Minister. 

Thomson, William (Lord Kelvin) (1824-1907), Scottish mathematician and physicist, was born in Belfast, Ireland. He proposed his absolute scale of temperature in 1848. During his life he published more than 600 papers and was elected to the Royal Society in 1851. He is buried in Westminster Abbey next to Isaac Newton. 

The sub-dean of Westminster immediately approved interment of Rutherford s ashes in the nave of Westminster Abbey, just west of Newton s tomb and in line with Kelvin s. Eulogizing Rutherford at a conference in Calcutta the following January, James Jeans identified his place in the history of science ... 

Faraday was bom in south London to a poor family his father was a Yorkshire blacksmith who suffered ill-health throughout his life. In the rigidly class-conscious England of that day, a poor lad like Faraday had no chance of much of a formal education and indeed in his early years he suffered considerably from intolerance of this kind, particularly from the wife of the scientist Humphrey Davy who employed Faraday as laboratory assistant. He appears to have borne no rancor as a result he was a devout member and elder of the small Sandemanian denomination, an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. During his lifetime, Faraday rejected a knighthood and twice refused to become President of the Royal Society. There is a plaque in his memory in Westminster Abbey near Newton s tomb, but he refused to be buried there and is interred in the Sandemanian plot in Highgate Cemetery in London. 

Synod = (here) the Westminster Assembly of Divines, which, authorised by parliament, met in the Jerusalem Chapel of Westminster Abbey from 1643-8 to settle the form and discipline of a new church government to replace episcopacy. Sion House was the Cripplegate Street meeting place - virtually the club - of the London Presbyterian divines who, allied with Scots ministers seconded to the Assembly, agitated for a strict Presbyterian settlement. 

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