Chemist Gallery

Birstall, W Yorkshire - Unveiling statue of Joseph Priestly

Birstall, W Yorkshire - Unveiling the statue of Joseph Priestly on 12th October 1912 - at this point the unveiling party had adjourned to the Temperance Hall. Following the tragic assassination of the MP Jo Cox on 16th June 2016 (almost within sight of this statue), thousands of flowers were placed around it in remembrance. Priestly (1733-1804) was a 18th-century English theologian, dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and Liberal political theorist who supported the French Revolution and campaigned for the legal and civic rights of Dissenters. In Jo Cox's humanitarian campaigning can almost been seen a distant echo of Priestly, making the recent spontaneous memorial very apt indeed. Date: 1912

© Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection

Dmitry Mendeleyev, Russian chemist

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev (1834-1907), Russian chemist. Mendeleyev (or Mendeleev) was initially an indifferent student, but left college at the top of his class. After attending the 1st Karlsruhe Congress (1860), Mendelayev worked on organising trends in atomic weights and valency. From this, he developed the first true periodic table of the elements (final version published in 1871). This contained some gaps, but as new elements were discovered to have the properties predicted by the table, Mendeleyev became famous worldwide. This image was created on 1 June 1900

© RIA NOVOSTI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Marie Curie, caricature

Marie Curie. Caricature of the Polish chemist Marie Curie (1867-1934), holding a round bottomed flask. Curie is known for her pioneering early work with radioactivity. She isolated the elements polonium and radium from uranium ore, a feat that gained her the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. This award came eight years after she received the Nobel prize for Physics for her work on radioactivity in general. In World War I, she was a proponent of mobile radiography units for the diagnosis of injuries in wounded soldiers. She died of aplastic anaemia, almost certainly due to her lifelong exposure to the hazardous materials she worked with, ignorant of their dangers

© GARY BROWN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY