Abstract
AFTER a connexion of almost forty years with the chemical department of the University of Glasgow, Prof. T. S. Patterson retires from the Gardiner chair of chemistry at the end of the present session, thus bringing to a close a period of teaching activity which has coincided with a period of great expansion in the University Chemical Department. As a research worker Prof. Patterson's chief interest lay in the subject of optical activity, and more especially in the physico-chemical aspect of the subject. His investigations on the effect of solvent, temperature and wave-length of light on the rotatory power of the derivatives of tartaric acid have produced data which will be of great value to future workers, while his modification of the “characteristic diagram”of Armstrong and Walker has simplified the co-ordination of rotatory dispersion phenomena. But in recent years Prof. Patterson has become more absorbed in the historical aspect of chemistry, and in this field he has found fuller scope for his literary ability than was possible in the mere recording of the results of personal experiment. The results of his researches on the lives and work of the earlier chemists have been embodied in excellent articles contributed to the Annals of Science and to Isis. He has always taken an interest in student activities and was a constant attendant at meetings of the “Alchemists”, a student chemical society the well-being of which he had much at heart.
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Gardiner Chair of Chemistry at Glasgow. Nature 149, 407 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149407a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149407a0