The Biochemical Journal Vol 15

Excerpt from The Biochemical Journal, Vol. 15: Edited for the Biochemical Society Chemists and biochemists everywhere will learn with deep regret of the death of Spencer Pickering on the night of Sunday, December 5th, after a long and wearisome illness at the age of 62. He came of a long line of distinguished ancestors; his father was Percival A. Pickering, Q.C., and his mother was a Stanhope, daughter of John Spencer Stanhope and granddaughter of the famous Coke of Norfolk, Earl of Leicester, by his romantic marriage with his young ward. Pickering was proud of his descent, as well he might be, and spent no little time in editing the family records and tracing their extensive relationships. He was educated at Eton, but the classics did not appeal to him: when he entered Balliol he read science and in 1881 took a First Class Honours degree. From the outset, however, he was a very independent minded student, and one of his first published papers was a controversion of an opinion held by his tutor. Being possessed of sufficient private means the question of a career did not worry him as it does some; he was able to follow his bent and pursue his scientific studies unhampered by financial considerations. But he was not attracted by the life at a university. He went down after he had taken his degree and set up a laboratory at his house in Bryanstone Square, London, where he carried out his well-known measurements on the physical properties of mixtures of acids and water. His results led him to controvert the dissociation hypothesis of Arrhenius. An account of the phenomena as he saw them is given in Thorpe's Dictionary of Chemistry under the heading "Solutions." In reading his papers, even those who do not agree with his conclusions are forced to recognise that he handled his data well and was seriously trying to find out what really lay behind them. Although an independent worker he did not cut himself off from institutions; he accepted a lectureship at Bedford College which he held from 1881 to 1887. He also took part in other intellectual activities and early became a member of the Athenaeum. Had he continued in his work he would have become a useful critic of physical chemistry, standing outside the dissociation school, and he could not have failed to exercise an important influence on the development of the subject. By a serious accident in the laboratory, however, he had lost an eye and suffered a severe shock which led to so much illness that his doctors advised him to spend part of his time in the country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.