Abstract
A TERCENTENARY Memorial Lecture entitled "William Davidson of Aberdeen : The First Scots Professor of Chemistry"was delivered in Marischal College, Aberdeen, on November 26, 1948, by Dr. John Read, professor of chemistry in the University of St. Andrews. Davidson was a native of Aberdeenshire who graduated at Marischal College in 1617 and then migrated to France. Here he became known as an authority on medicine, pharmacy and chemistry. He gave instruction in medical chemistry of the Paracelsian type, and was appointed a physician to the French king. In 1647 he was nominated to the first chair of chemistry to be founded in France, at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, where he entered upon his duties in 1648. Davidson was one of the three earliest occupants of a chair of chemistry, and the first native of the British Isles to become a professor of chemistry. Owing to religious and medical jealousies, he was forced to resign the chair in 1651 ; thenceforward, until 1667, he was chief physician to the King of Poland. He died in Paris in 1669. Besides various medical works, Davidson wrote an early text-book of chemistry entitled "Philosophia Pyrotechnica". Although imbued with the ideas of his alchemical predecessors, and given to associating the doctrines of chemistry with religious and metaphysical conceptions, he has claims to be called a chemist rather than an alchemist. Davidson was particularly proud of the blue blood of Scotland that ran in his veins; in 1629 he obtained a patent of nobility from Charles I and thereafter styled himself "Nobilis Scotus". To account for his entering the medical profession he told his readers that "professors of medicine were invested with such honour by the kings of Scotland that they enjoyed a title equal to that of earls".
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William Davidson of Aberdeen : 1648. Nature 162, 954 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162954d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162954d0