Alexander William Williamson

Alexander William Williamson ( born May 1, 1824 in Wandsworth, † May 6, 1904 in Haslemere ) was a British chemist of the 19th century who was known primarily for his namesake ether synthesis.

Life and work

Williamson was born on 1 May 1824 in Wandsworth, a district of London, as the second of three children. After attending school in London, Dijon and Wiesbaden, he begins in 1841 to study medicine in Heidelberg. Leopold Gmelin there awakens his interest in chemistry. 1844-1846 learns Williamson in the laboratory of Justus von Liebig in Giessen and received his doctorate there. He then studied in Paris from 1846 to 1849 Mathematics; the way he sets up a private laboratory where he developed the first steps of ether synthesis. 1849 Williamson takes the professor of Applied Chemistry at University College London, from 1855 for General Chemistry. 1850-1851 arise publications on the structure of alcohols and ethers, in which he demonstrates the similarity of these classes of substances with water. According to studies of the ether synthesis from ethyl iodide and sodium ethylate, and recrystallized from ethanol to sulfuric acid addition, several publications appear on this subject, in which Williamson 's famous contemporaries Liebig, Mitscherlich and Jöns Jakob Berzelius contradicts and ultimately is right. The Briton also discovered one of the first that many organic reactions are reversible, depending on the conditions chosen. From 1869 he studied the then little young atomic theory and sees it as an excellent explanation of the relationships discovered by him. 1887 Williamson retires from active teaching and research.