- Daniel Rutherford
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Daniel Rutherford 
Daniel Rutherford. Mezzotint engraving after a portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn.Born 3 November 1749
EdinburghDied 15 December 1819[1] Nationality Scottish Fields Chemistry Institutions Physician in Edinburgh (1775-86)
Professor of Medicine and Botany, Edinburgh University, and Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (1786-1819)
King's Botanist in Scotland (1786-)
Physician at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (1791)Alma mater University of Edinburgh Known for Nitrogen Influences Joseph Black Daniel Rutherford FRSE FRCPE FLS FSA(Scot) (1749–1819) was a Scottish physician, chemist and botanist who is most famous for the isolation of nitrogen in 1772.[2]
Rutherford was the uncle of the novelist Sir Walter Scott.
Contents
Early life
The son of Professor John Rutherford (1695–1779) and Anne Mackay, Daniel Rutherford was born in Edinburgh on 3 November 1749. He was educated at Mundell's School and Edinburgh University (MD 1772).
Rutherford's Isolation of Nitrogen
When Joseph Black was studying the properties of carbon dioxide, he found that a candle would not burn in it.
He turned this problem over to his student at the time, Daniel Rutherford. Rutherford kept a mouse in a space with a confined quality of air until it died. Then, he burned a candle in the remaining air until it went out. Afterwards, he burned phosphorus in that, until it would not burn. Then the air was passed through a carbon dioxide absorbing solution. The remaining air did not support combustion, and a mouse could not live in it.
Rutherford called the gas (which we now know would have consisted primarily of nitrogen) “noxious air” or “phlogisticated air”.
Rutherford reported the experiment in 1772. He and Black were convinced of the validity of the phlogiston theory, so they explained their results in terms of it.
He was a professor of botany at the University of Edinburgh and keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. He left home at the age of 16 to go to college.
See also
References
- ^ Waterston, Charles D; Macmillan Shearer, A (July 2006). Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783-2002: Biographical Index. II. Edinburgh: The Royal Society of Edinburgh. ISBN 9780902198845. http://www.rse.org.uk/fellowship/fells_indexp2.pdf. Retrieved 8 February 2011.
- ^ Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent (1965). Elements of chemistry, in a new systematic order: containing all the modern discoveries. Courier Dover Publications. p. 15. ISBN 0486646246. http://books.google.com/books?id=yS_m3PrVbpgC&pg=PR15.
- ^ "Author Query". International Plant Names Index. http://www.ipni.org/ipni/authorsearchpage.do.
External links
Categories:- Botanists with author abbreviations
- 1749 births
- 1819 deaths
- 18th-century botanists
- 19th-century botanists
- 18th-century chemists
- 19th-century chemists
- 18th-century Scottish people
- 19th-century Scottish people
- People from Edinburgh
- Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
- Academics of the University of Edinburgh
- Members of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh
- Discoverers of chemical elements
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
- Scottish antiquarians
- Scottish botanists
- Scottish chemists
- Scottish medical doctors
- People educated at James Mundell's School
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