Manchester Scientists in NorthWest England

Manchester Celebrities
Science & Discovery (2 of 5)

Books by & about John Ferriar

John Ferriar

(1761-1815)
Born in 1761 at Oxnam in Roxburghshire, John Ferriar was a famous physician in Manchester, as well as a writer and literary critic. He had studied medicine at Edinburgh University, graduated in 1781, and worked in a practice in Stockton-on-Tees, before moving to Manchester around 1785.
In 1789 Ferriar was appointed physician at Manchester Infirmary, where he introduced many reforms and practices to help in the healthy recovery of patients.

His campaigning led to the establishment of a Board of Health, the prohibition of cellars as living quarters, limits on domestic overcrowding and many other sanitary reforms which improved the health and living conditions of the poor people of Manchester.

He established the concept of the isolation ward for serious infectious diseases (the "fever ward"), both in the Infirmary and at the Stockport hospitals. He advocated shorter working hours, restrictions on child labour, and the introduction of public baths to improve hygiene.

He also wrote 4 volumes of medical histories. His literary interests were many. He became a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society soon after his arrival in Manchester, and here he presented many learned papers, most of which were subsequently published. His works include the paper "Of Popular Illusions", an essay on the dramatist Massinger, and "Illustrations of Sterne".

By the time of his death in 1815 the Manchester Infirmary had developed into a modern effective hospital with an unparalleled reputation in the cure of fevers, and the control of epidemics.

He is buried in St Mary's Churchyard, and the memorial plaque to his memory was removed when St Marys was demolished, and is now located in St Ann's Church in Manchester.

Books by & about Roget

Peter Mark Roget

Roget's Thesaurus

(1779-1869)
Peter Mark Roget is best known for his "Thesaurus" nowadays, though he was also one of the many famous physicians at the Manchester Infirmary - and this was his primary work. He was born in London in 1779, the son of a Swiss pastor of a French Protestant Church in Threadneedle Street, London's celebrated banking area.

Roget studied Medicine and Mathematics at Edinburgh University, and graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 1798, aged just 19 years. As a young doctor he published several works on consumption (tuberculosis), and wrote on the effects of the newly discovered chemical nitrous oxide (known as "laughing Gas" and a major anaesthetic). On the death of Thomas Percival, the chief surgeon, in 1804, Roget was offered the post, which he held from then until 1808. During this time he worked to found the Manchester Medical School.

He also lectured on medical topics, and spoke at the Literary & Philosophical Society, where he was vice-president for 2 years. He was also the first secretary at the newly formed Portico Library, where Manchester intellectuals gathered to read newly published works.

From 1808, Roget left Manchester and went to work in London, where he continued lecturing on medical topics. He worked at the Medical School in Windmill Street, and at the Northern Dispensary. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and later its secretary, and continued to write and to introduce several original inventions.

In 1840 he was effectively retired from medicine, but most of his remaining years were to be spent compiling his now world famous "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases", first published in 1852, and with 28 editions and reprints during his lifetime.

Roget's Thesaurus is still being printed today, and his name has become synonymous with that work.

Books by and about John Dalton

John Dalton

(1766-1844)
John Dalton was born to a Quaker family in Eaglesfield near Cockermouth in the English Lake District in 1766.

His formal education is unknown, though he was taught science in the evenings by Elihu Robinson. Robinson and his friend, the philosopher Gough, were to be instrumental in developing Dalton's interest in science and natural philosophy.

An intelligent boy, he actually taught at Eaglesfield School when aged just 12, and later he and his brother were appointed teachers at a school in Kendal.

At the age of 27 his reputation as a promising young scientist had so grown that he was offered a professorship in mathematics and natural philosophy at the New College in Mosley Street in Manchester.

In the same year, 1799, he published his first book "Meteorological Observations and Essays", which contained many ideas which were to form the basis of his later work on the study of gases, and from which he was to derive his fundamental laws of chemistry.

Although the college was moved to York in 1799, Dalton elected to remain in Manchester, and made a living by privately teaching mathematics at his home in Faulkener Street (now in the heart of Manchester's Chinatown), and later in the basement of the Society of Friends Meeting House in George Street.

A bachelor who lived modestly, Dalton carried out most of his research here, imposing upon himself a strict working regime.

His only recreation was a game of bowls on Thursday afternoons at the Dog & Partridge pub.

He shared accommodation for 26 years with the Reverend William Johns and his family at number 10 George Street, but he lived alone at 27 Faulkener Street towards the end of his life.

Shortly after arriving in Manchester, Dalton had joined the Literary & Philosophical Society, where he delivered his first paper on colour-blindness (of which some forms are still known as "Daltonism").

This was followed by four other essays dealing with discoveries he had made about the constitution of gases, evaporation, heat expansion, meteorology and steam power.

His further experiments led to the formation of his Atomic Theory, for which he is universally best known.

The result of this theory was the tabulation of atomic weights and a mathematical basis for chemistry, which had hitherto been haphazard and rather ad hoc.

In time he became president of the Literary & Philosophical Society, and he continued to present papers on his scientific discoveries for many years.

In 1833 the British Association offered him a pension, and he was to receive many more honours in his later life; these included Honorary Doctorates at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh.

Upon his death he was given a virtual state funeral - his body lay in state in the Manchester Town Hall, where it was visited by upwards of 40,000 people, and a hundred coaches followed the funeral cortege to Ardwick Cemetery, where he lies buried.

He has a street named after him in the city centre, a statue of him is placed in the Town Hall entrance, and another stands outside the former Dalton College of Technology (now part of Manchester Metropolitan University) in Oxford Street.

He is also the subject of one of Ford Madox Brown's murals in the Manchester Town Hall.

Footnote:

On 7 June 2007, the Royal Society of Chemistry honoured John Dalton, when Professor Paul O'Brien, Head of School of Chemistry at the University of Manchester and RSC council member presented the RSC Chemical Landmark plaque to Professor Michael Lappert, Fellow of the RSC and current owner of John Dalton's Cottage in Eaglesfield near Cockermouth, Cumbria.

William Sturgeon

William Sturgeon

(1783-1850)
William Sturgeon, the celebrated electrician and physicist, was born in 1783 at Whittington near Kirkby Lonsdale. He had little formal education, but was apprenticed as a shoemaker. He gave up this to enlist in the Westmorland Militia, and joined the Royal Artillery 2 years later. During this time he taught himself Mathematics, Latin and Greek, intending to study of natural science, for which he deemed these three elements essential.

Inspired by a bad thunderstorm, he began to investigate electrical discharges such as lightening, a study which he continued after leaving the army, and while holding various teaching posts in Addiscombe. One of these posts was with the East India Company's Military Academy, where he lectured on electro-magnetism, as well as publishing his findings in scientific magazines.
In 1840 he was appointed to the post of Superintendent of the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science in Manchester, to "stimulate research and foster inventive talent".

This institution was to produce many promising students, including James Prescott Joule, who contributed to the Annals of Electricity magazine, which was edited by Sturgeon. Sturgeon lectured on many scientific topics, including optics, magnetism and electromagnetism; he was popular with his audiences because of the clear delivery and presentation of his material. However, the Victoria Gallery ran out of money and closed down in 1842, leaving Sturgeon without means or a job, and his life descended into poverty, supported by occasional revenues from one-off lectures.

In 1847 he was given a grant of £200 by the Royal Bounty Fund, to which a government pension of £50 a year was added later. This was insufficient for his needs, however, and he died penniless, better known in Europe than in his native England. He had been responsible for the invention of the electromagnet, itself fundamental to many later inventions which could not have been made without it - among them the telegraph and the telephone.

A monument to him, "a poor man of science", is placed in Kirkby Lonsdale Church in the Lake District, which commemorates many of his inventions and discoveries.

Hans Geiger

(1882-1945)
Born Johannes Wilhelm Geiger, physicist Hans Geiger was born in Neustadt, Germany, in 1882. In 1902 he studied physics in Munich and Erlangen and attained his doctorate in 1906 before moving to Manchester to study under Ernest Rutherford in 1907.

In 1912 he became leader of the Physical-Technical Reichsanstalt in Berlin, in 1925 was appointed professor in Kiel, and by 1936 was working in Berlin. While there, together with the graduate student Walter Muller, he developed, his Geiger Counter.

Geiger did most of the original so-called "Rutherford scattering" experiment with Marsden - as a result of this work he devised his ionisation counter. Together with Walter Miller he developed this into the Geiger counter.

He was one of the discoverers of the Geiger-Nuttal law and performed experiments that lead to Rutherford's atomic model. He was also a member of the Uranverein (Uranium Club) in Nazi Germany. This was the group of German physicists who worked to develop a German atomic bomb.

It is thought that Geiger held an unwavering loyalty to the Nazi Party and it is alleged that this led him to betray many of his Jewish colleagues.