William Crookes

Also known as Sir William Crookes

British chemist and physicist (1832-1919)

OverviewAI-generated

William Crookes (1832–1919) was a British chemist, physicist, photographer, and psychic. Born and deceased in London, he was educated at Imperial College London and served as an employee of the University of Chester. His fields of work included chemistry, physics, spectroscopy, and spiritism. He was a member of the Royal Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Crookes received several honors, including the Copley Medal, the Royal Medal, and the Elliott Cresson Medal. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He is buried at Brompton Cemetery.

Synthesized by Vinony from 34 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Works: 27

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Group
Origin: United Kingdom
Active from: 2008
Active to: 2017-07-12

alternative rockindie popindie rock

Discography

Official site Discogs Stream

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 1
Total plays: 1

via Last.fm · WILLIAM CROOKES

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

VMD: Visual molecular dynamics
· 1996 · cited 62,917x
Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure
· 1976 · cited 44,815x
Comparison of simple potential functions for simulating liquid water
· 1983 · cited 39,531x
QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data
· 2010 · cited 30,942x
Preparation of Graphitic Oxide
· 1958 · cited 28,681x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“Which was first, Matter or Force? If we think on this question, we shall find that we are unable to conceive of matter without force, or force without matter. When God created the elements of which the earth is composed, He created certain wondrous forces, which are set free and become evident when matter acts on matter.”
“An omnipotent being could rule the course of this world in such a way that none of us should discover the hidden springs of action. He need not make the sun stand still upon Gibeon. He could do all that he wanted by the expenditure of infinitesimal diverting force upon ultra-microscopic modifications of the human germ.”
“All the phenomena of the universe are presumably in some way continuous, and it is unscientific to call in the aid of mysterious agencies when, with every fresh advance in knowledge, it is shown that ether vibrations have powers and attributes abundantly equal to any demand — even to the transmission of thought.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

~19 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Sir William Crookes (/krʊks/; 17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) 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 contribution to plasma physics.

He is credited with discovering the element thallium, announced in 1861, with the help of spectroscopy. He was also the first to describe the spectrum of terrestrial helium, in 1865. Crookes was the inventor of the Crookes radiometer, but did not discern the true explanation of the phenomenon he detected.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “William Crookes” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.