Samuel Morison Brown (February 23 1817 – 20 September 1856), Scottish chemist, poet and essayist.

Life

Brown was born at

Haddington, East Lothian The Royal Burgh of Haddington ( sco, Haidintoun, gd, Baile Adainn) is a town in East Lothian, Scotland. It is the main administrative, cultural and geographical centre for East Lothian. It lies about east of Edinburgh. The name Haddington is ...

, the fourth son of Samuel Brown, the founder of itinerating libraries, and grandson of John Brown, author of the ''Self-Interpreting Bible''. In 1832, he entered the university of

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

, where, after studying in Berlin and St. Petersburg, he graduated as MD in 1839. About 1840, he was engaged in experiments by which he sought to prove that carbon in certain states of combination is susceptible of conversion into

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...

, and his failure to establish this proposition had much to do with his want of success as a candidate for the chair of chemistry at Edinburgh in 1843. He held the doctrine that the chemical elements are compounds of equal and similar atoms, and might therefore possibly be all derived from one generic atom. In 1850 he published a tragedy, ''Galileo Galilei'', and two volumes of his ''Lectures on the Atomic Theory'' and ''Essays Scientific and Literary'' appeared in 1858, with a preface by his kinsman Dr. John Brown, the author of ''Horae Subsecivae''. He was also the author of "Lay sermons on the Theory of Christianity." He died in Edinburgh.

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Samuel Morison 1817 births 1856 deaths Scottish chemists People from Haddington, East Lothian Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Edinburgh