"Like Moses and His Burning Bush"

July 31, 2008

William Crookes (1832-1919). British chemist. Educated in London at the Royal College of Chemistry under August Hoffmann, Crookes spent his early years in the employ of the Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford and the Chester College of Science. In 1856, however, he came into a substantial fortune which allowed him to return to London and devote his life to private research and to the publication of his weekly journal, The Chemical News, which he began in 1860. He also translated and published numerous books on industrial chemistry, as well as a stenographic account of Michael Faraday's famous series of popular lectures on the Chemical History of the Candle (1861). Best known for his spectroscopic discovery of the element thallium (1861) and his invention of the radiometer (1875) and spinthariscope (1903), Crookes also made substantial improvements in the design of gaseous discharge tubes and in the investigation of cathode rays, which he identified with a "fourth state of matter." Many of his tube designs were used as standard demonstrations until the 1980s. Beginning in the 1870s, Crookes also became increasingly interested in psychic phenomena and began to devote a substantial amount of his time to the investigation of various mediums.

Courtesy of Professor William Jensen, Oesper Chair of the History of Chemistry and Chemical Education, University of Cincinnati

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