insider.si.edu: William Crookes letter to Douglas Sladen, dated 7 Kensington Park Gardens, W., London, 5 February 1915
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William Crookes
Sir William Crookes was an English chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, now part of Imperial College London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing the Crookes tube, which was made in 1875. Observing cathode rays generated in these tubes, Crookes posited that "radiant matter" was a unique fourth state of matter, a foundational contribu…
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science · English chemist and physicist (1832–1919) · chemist · physicist · psychic · photographer · also William Crookes, Sir William Crookes, Crookes
Born 17 June 1832 · Died 4 April 1919 · Q189552
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2025· 1 entry
1927· 1 entry
“William Crookes : A Victorian Man of Science”
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1919· 1 entry
Died 1919-04-04.
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1916· 1 entry
William Hope tricked Crookes with a fake spirit photograph of his wife
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1913· 2 entries
Career landmark: President of the Royal Society (1913–1915).
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Crookes created an ultraviolet blocking lens made from glass containing cerium, but only lightly tinted
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1912· 1 entry
Won Elliott Cresson Medal (1912).
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1904· 1 entry
Won Copley Medal (1904).
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1903· 1 entry
Crookes turned his attention to the newly discovered phenomenon of radioactivity, achieving the separation from uranium of its active transformation product, uranium-X (later established to be protactinium)
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1899· 1 entry
Won Albert Medal (1899).
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1897· 2 entries
Awarded Knight Bachelor (1897).
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John Grier Hibben wrote that Crookes's idea of ether waves explaining telepathy was not a scientific hypothesis "he presents no facts to indicate its probability or to save it from being relegated to the sphere of bare c
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1890· 1 entry
Was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
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1888· 1 entry
Won Davy Medal (1888).
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1886· 1 entry
Crookes was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society
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1883· 1 entry
Won Royal Society Bakerian Medal (1883).
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1875· 1 entry
Won Royal Medal (1875).
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1867· 2 entries
At 21 from yellow fever contracted while he was on an expedition to lay a telegraph cable from Cuba to Florida
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Influenced by Cromwell Fleetwood Varley, Crookes attended a séance to try to get in touch with his brother
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1866· 1 entry
Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld identified a rare mineral from Skrikerum as a selenide of copper, thallium, and silver (Cu7(Tl, Ag)Se4), and named the mineral crookesite in honor of Sir William Crookes
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1860· 1 entry
Edited the lectures and published it as a book (he also wrote the Preface)
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1859· 1 entry
Founded the Chemical News, a science magazine which he edited for many years and conducted on much less formal lines than was usual for the journals of scientific societies
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1855· 1 entry
Was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Chester Diocesan Training College
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1854· 1 entry
Where he adapted the recent innovation of wax paper photography to machines built by Francis Ronalds to continuously record meteorological parameters
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1848· 1 entry
At age 16, Crookes entered the Royal College of Chemistry (now the Imperial College chemistry department) to study organic chemistry
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1832· 2 entries
Born 1832-06-17.
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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)
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