Abstract
PROF. JAMES EMERSON REYNOLDS, whose death at seventy-five years of age was announced in NATURE of February 26, was born in 1844 in Booterstown, a suburb of Dublin. His father was a medical practitioner and proprietor of a medical hall, and it was while assisting his father thathe first became enamoured of trie study of chemistry. Destined to follow in the profession of his father, Reynolds studied medicine, and became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Edinburgh. Although he practised in Dublin for a short time, his great desire was to devote himself to chemistry, and his chance to discard medicine soon came when, in March, 1867, he was appointed “keeper ofminerals” at the National Museum in Dublin, and in the following year analyst to the Royal, Dublin Society. It was here that he made his first important contribution to chemistry. In 1869 he discovered thiocarbamide, the sulphur analogue of urea, which he obtained as,a result of the isomeric transformation of ammonium thiocyanate. This was a discovery which attracted a good deal of attention at the time, sinceLiebig and, later, Hofmann had both been unsuccessful in their attempts to isolate the compound—in fact,Hofmann had previously suggested that ammonium thiocyanate was probably thiourea.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
W., E. Prof. J. Emerson Reynolds, F.R.S. Nature 105, 49 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105049a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105049a0