William's father, Joseph Crookes, gave the couple a house at 15 Stanley Street, Brompton. Since staff at Chester were required to be bachelors, he had to resign his position. In April 1856 Crookes married Ellen, daughter of William Humphrey of Darlington. In 1855 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Chester Diocesan Training College. He worked with Manuel Johnson at the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford in 1854, where he adapted the recent innovation of wax paper photography to machines built by Francis Ronalds to continuously record meteorological parameters. These were the subject of his first published papers, in 1851. When Crookes embarked upon original work, it wasn't in organic chemistry, but rather into new compounds of selenium. : 12–13īy 1851, Crookes' interest in photography and optics caused his father to build him a laboratory in the garden at home for his research. Such friends reinforced Crookes' interest in optical physics : 13 which was respected by Hofmann. Through Barlow, Crookes met scientists such as George Gabriel Stokes and Michael Faraday. One of Crookes' students was the Reverend John Barlow, Secretary of the Royal Institution, who chose to take a course in analytical chemistry.
: 8–10Īlthough Crookes revered Hofmann, he did not share his primary interest in organic chemistry. In October 1851, Crookes was promoted to senior assistant, a position he held until 1854. At the end of his second year, Crookes became a junior assistant to August Wilhelm von Hofmann, doing laboratory demonstrations and helping with research and commercial analysis. At the end of his first year, Crookes won the Ashburton scholarship which covered his second year's tuition. Crookes paid £25 for his first year's tuition and had to provide his own apparatus and some of the more expensive chemicals. His father's shop was about half a mile away. Crookes lived with his parents about three miles from the College in Oxford Street. In 1848, at age 16, Crookes entered the Royal College of Chemistry (now the Imperial College chemistry department) to study organic chemistry. Joseph Crookes had had five children with his first wife two sons from that marriage, Joseph and Alfred, took over the tailoring business, leaving William free to choose his own path. 1660), had been Mayor of Hartlepool, County Durham on three occasions. Joseph Crookes's father, William (1734-1814), was also a tailor, and his grandfather, John Crookes (b. William Crookes was born in London in 1832, the eldest of eight surviving children (eight others died young) of Joseph Crookes (1792–1889), a wealthy tailor and real estate investor of north-country origin, and his second wife, Mary (née Scott 1806–1884).
He received many public and academic honours. His interests, ranging over pure and applied science, economic and practical problems, and psychic research, made him a well-known personality and earned him a substantial income.
His experiments in chemistry and physics were known for the originality of their design, and he is considered a "superb experimentalist". He was considered remarkable for his industriousness and for his intellectual qualities. Crookes also invented a 100% ultraviolet blocking sunglass lens.įor a time, he was interested in spiritualism and became president of the Society for Psychical Research.Ĭrookes' life was one of unbroken scientific activity that extended over sixty-seven years. He was also the first to describe the spectrum of terrestrial helium, in 1865.Ĭrookes was the inventor of the Crookes radiometer but did not discern the true explanation of the phenomenon he detected. He is credited with discovering the element thallium, announced in 1861, with the help of spectroscopy. This was a foundational discovery that eventually changed the whole of chemistry and physics. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube which was made in 1875. Sir William Crookes OM FRS ( / k r ʊ k s/ 17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, now part of Imperial College London, and worked on spectroscopy.