14
May 1815 - 31 Jan 1849
English chemist, whose early schooling
began at Enfield, Middlesex, and continued in Bourbourg,
near
Gravelines, France.
Although at first he seemed
destined for a trade career, by age 17 he had decided to commit to
chemistry and began attending a philosophical class at the Western
Literary
Institution, in Leicester-square, London. Thomas Everett and Henry
Watts contributed to the philosophical class to the mutual improvement
of its members by lecturing and experiments.
He began studies under Professor Thomas
Everitt, an accomplished analyst and chemical lecturer, at
Middlesex Hospital in January 1837. Fownes spent a portion of 1839 with
Professor Liebig at Giessen,
Germany, pursuing his Ph.D. , then returned to England and until 1840
was an assistant in the laboratory of Professor Graham at University
College.
In the next two years Fownes
held a post as lecturer at Charing Cross hospital, then in 1842 became
professor of chemistry to the Pharmaceutical Society, and in the same
year was able to return to Middlesex Hospital to succeed his mentor,
Professor Everitt, as chemical lecturer there.
In 1842, he won a prize from the Royal
Agricultural Society for his essay, Food of Plants. He
presented a series of six lectures on "The Chemistry of Vegetable Life"
in Jan and Feb 1844 at the London Institution1.
In the same year, he published his essay, Chemistry
as Exemplifies the Wisdom and Beneficence of God, in which he
gave presented aspects of animal and plant chemistry. For this work he
had won one hundred guineas (£105) as the first Actonian
Prize awarded by the Royal Institution since it was endowed in 1838 by
Hannah Acton.
He also published in 1844 a general
text-book of chemistry,
A
Manual of Elementary Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical which
became very successful and survived decades after him through twelve
editions, the last in 1872. Fownes worked on the first two editions,
and a third published posthumously. Later editions were revised and
expanded by other editors: H. Bence Jones, A.W. Hofmann, and
Henry Watts.
Fownes gained a reputation for his particular
interest in
organic chemistry. He combined both insight and careful analyses in his
research which led to notable discoveries. As reported in
Philosophical
Transactions of 1845, he was presented with a royal medal
by the Royal Society for his research on furfurine and benzoline, names
which Fownes coined. His preparation of furfurine was the
first successful artificial production of a vegeto-alkali or organic
salt-base, and he discovered the organic compound benzoline, another
organic salt-base, obtained from oil of bitter almonds.
By 1845, his health began to decline
with symptoms of pulmonary disease that caused him to resign from both
his positions with the Middlesex Hospital and the Pharmaceutical
Society.
However, he resumed his academic work in
1846 as professor of practical chemistry at University College where
the Birkbeck Laboratory had just been established. He was recommended
for the position by his friend Professor Graham. Fownes was both an
effective teacher and organised there an excellent course of practical
instruction, although his failing health limited his tenure to the last
two years of his life.
In
Spring 1847 he travelled to Barbados in hopes of health
benefits from the warm climate. He caught a cold after his return to
England in 1848 from which he died at the age of only 34 years on 31
January 1849, at his father's house in Brompton.
By the time of his death, he had for several years been
secretary of the Chemical Society, in whose journal he had published a
number of his papers. Although he died young, he had a productive decade of life in which he had eighteen
papers to his credit that had appeared in several journals. These included:
- On the Equivalence of Carbon, Philosophical Magazine,
1839, (his first)
- Direct Formation of Cyanogen from its Elements, British Association Report,
1841
- Artificial Yeast, Proceedings
of the Chemical Society
- Action of Oil of Vitriol on Ferrocyanide of Potassium, Proceedings of the Chemical
Society
- Hippuric Acid, Proceedings
of the Chemical Society
- Phosphoric Acid in Felspar of Jersey, Proceedings of the Chemical
Society
- On the Existence of Phosphoric Acid in Rocks of Igneous
Origin, Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, read 25 Apr
1844
- An Account of the Artificial Formation of a Vegeto-Alkali, Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society, read 23 Jan 1845
- On Benzoline, a New Organic Salt-base Obtained from Oil of
Bitter Almonds, Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, read 29 May 1845
- On the Value of Absolute Alcohol in Spirits of Different
Specific Gravities, Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, read 17 Jun 1847
- On the Equivalent or Combining Volumes of Solid Bodies, Pharmaceutical Journal,
1849, (his last)
References:
"George Fownes," Dictionary of
National Biography, editted by
Leslie Stephen, publ. Macmillan & Co. (1899) Vol XX, p. 90
"Address Delivered before the Royal Society," by Earl of
Ross Abstracts of the Papers Communicated to the Royal
Society of London, Vol. 5. (1843 - 1850), p.882
1. Literary and Scientific Intelligence: London Institution, The Gentleman's Magazine,
by Sylvanus Urban, New Series Vol. XX, (1843) p.629
See also:
