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A devoted couple, William and Ellen Crookes had six sons and three daughters. Their first child, Alice Mary (born 1857, later Mrs. Cowland) remained unmarried for forty years, living with her parents and working as an assistant to her father.
- William Crookes – Biographical Background
- Spectral Analysis to Discover New Elements
- Experiments with Cathode Rays and Plasma
- Further Cathode Ray Research
- Fluorescent Tubes
- Mass Spectroscopy and Isotopes
- Further Achievements, Spiritualism and Theosophy
William Crookes was born in London, the eldest son of the second wife of Joseph Crookes, a very wealthy tailor. He attended high school until the age of 16, when he transferred to the Royal College of Chemistry, where August Wilhelm von Hofmanntaught. At the age of nineteen, Crookes became an assistant to Hofmann at the school. A year earlier, afte...
In 1859, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff developed spectral analysis. Now Crookes was able to detect the chemical element thallium in his earlier selenium separations during spectroscopic experiments – at the same time as Claude Auguste Lamy. It is named after the Greek word thallos (“green shoot”) because of the green light effect in s...
Along with Wilhelm Hittorf, Crookes was also concerned with cathode rays. In a strongly evacuated glass tube, Crookes was able to detect the cathode rays as a shadow-casting cross (in the shadow-cross tube) by a special construction of the anode (made of aluminum). Cathode rays – unlike channel rays – are similarly invisible as sound waves, but whe...
Before that, W. Hittorf had already described the cathode rays, but without being able to gain the necessary attention. The cathode rays found the interest of many other scientists. Heinrich Hertz discovered in 1892 that cathode rays can penetrate very thin layers of solid materials. Philipp Lenard extended the experiment, by drilling a small hole...
Crookes continued to study the plasma state in evacuated glass tubes under high voltage. He developed what became known as Crookes’ light tube, which laid the foundation for the mass production of fluorescent tubes. From 1881, Crookes investigated the influence of cathode rays on chemical substances. He observed the fluorescent light (luminescent l...
In spectra observations of rare earths and other metals, Crookes could observe very many different spectral lines. He assumed that a chemical element has not only one atomic weight, but consists of atoms with different atomic weights, whereby a certain atomic weight can also clearly predominate. The later work of Soddy, Fajans, Aston, who were able...
In 1866, he was entrusted by the government with a paper on disinfectants for cattle disease. He pointed out the value of phenols in disinfection. In 1870 Crookes published a paper on beet sugar manufacture. In 1899 he dealt with the sewage question. This was followed in 1908 by a paper on the manufacture of artificial diamonds. In 1910 he wrote a ...
William Crookes was born in London, England, on June 17, 1832, the son of Joseph Crookes and his second wife, Mary Scott. At the age of 15, Crookes enrolled at the Royal College of Chemistry, marking the beginning of a lifelong interest in the subject.
Sir William Crookes (born June 17, 1832, London, Eng.—died April 4, 1919, London) was a British chemist and physicist noted for his discovery of the element thallium and for his cathode-ray studies, fundamental in the development of atomic physics.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 7, 2007 · William Crookes was born in London, the eldest son of Joseph Crookes, who was a tailor of north-country origin. His second wife was Mary Scott. William received some instruction at a grammar school at Chippenham, Wiltshire.
Jul 15, 2013 · Such was the motto chosen by William Crookes when Queen Victoria knighted him. The self-educated son of a tailor, never on any university's faculty, Crookes was an outsider made good, an enemy of the growing professionalism of science who nevertheless made his living as an independent scientist, educator, and industrial consultant: (see the ...
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Crookes was the eldest son of the sixteen children of Joseph Crookes, a prosperous tailor, by his second wife, Mary Scott. In 1848, after irregular schooling, he received his scholarly introduction to science when he became a student at A. W. Hofmann’s Royal College of Chemistry in London.
