Abstract
ON October 15 occurs the centenary of the birth of Frederick Guthrie, through whose initiative the Physical Society of London was founded. Born in Bayswater, London, Guthrie was the son of a Bond Street tailor, and as a boy had as tutor the chemist Henry Watts (1815-1884), to whom no doubt he owed his early devotion to science. He was sent to University College School, and afterwards entered University College, where Watts was an assistant professor, and studied chemistry under Graham and Williamson, and mathematics under De Morgan. From London, at the age of twenty-one, he went to Germany, working under Bunsen at Heidelberg and under Kolbe at Marburg. On his return to England he was successively assistant to Frankland at Owens College and to Lyon Playfair at Edinburgh. In 1861 he was appointed professor of chemistry and physics at the Royal College, Mauritius, where he had as his colleague Walter Besant, the novelist. In 1869 he became professor of physics at the Normal College of Science, South Kensington, and this post he held until his death.
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Guthrie and the Physical Society. Nature 132, 595–596 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132595b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132595b0