Augustus George Vernon Harcourt

  Augustus George Vernon Harcourt FRS (December 24, 1834 – August 23, 1919) was a English chemist who spent his career at Oxford University. He was one of the first scientists to do quantitative work in the field of chemical kinetics. His uncle, William Vernon Harcourt (1789 – 1871), founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Brief biography

According to Who's Who, Harcourt was born in London in 1824 to Admiral Fredrick E. Vernon Harcourt and his wife, Marcia^[1] Harcourt's mother was sister of the first Lord Tollemache. Augustus Harcourt was educated at Harrow before enrolling at Oxford's Balliol College, where he took a degree in Natural Science in 1858, working with Henry Smith and Benjamin Brodie. A year later Harcourt became Lee's Reader in chemistry and took a position as a senior student at Christ Church, an Oxford college. Working with the mathematician William Esson (1839 – 1916), Harcourt began a series of chemical investigations which lasted for over 40 years.

In 1872, Harcourt married Rachel Mary Bruce, daughter of the Home Secretary, Henry Bruce. The couple had two sons and eight daughters.^[2] Harcourt was contemporary with Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, and is mentioned in Carroll's diaries.^[3]

Harcourt remained at Oxford until he retired in 1902, whereupon he moved to St. Clare, near Ryde on the Isle of Wight. He died there in 1919, and his wife followed in 1927.

Chemical kinetics

In a long partnership, Harcourt and William Esson studied the rates of chemical reactions. Among the processes they investigated was the acid-catalyzed iodine clock reaction (iodide and hydrogen peroxide). Their work showed that the reaction's changing rate was proportional to the concentration of reactants present. This result was later formalized by Guldberg and Waage as the law of mass action. Harcourt and Esson also studied the reaction between oxalic acid and potassium permanganate.

Other scientific work

Harcourt's other activities included inventing a device to safely administer chloroform (an anesthesic), and the analysis and purification of coal gas, used for illumination. Harcourt also invented pentane-burning lamps that served as photometric standards.

Honours and activities

• 1863 - Fellow of the Royal Society
• 1865 – 1873 - Secretary of the Chemical Society
• 1895 - President of the Chemical Society

See also

• Chemical kinetics

For further reading

• Buxton, Dudley Wilmot (1914). Anaesthetics: Their Uses and Administration, 4, Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Co., 242.  - Harcourt's chloroform regulator.

• Harcourt, A. Vernon (1899), , in Cole, Thomas, , London: E. & F. N. Spon, Ltd., pp. 106 – 111 - Harcourt's pentane lamp.

• King, M. Christine (1983). "The Chemist in Allegory: Augustus Vernon Harcourt and the White Knight". Journal of Chemical Education 60: 177 – 180.

• Shorter, John (1980). "A. G. Vernon Harcourt". Journal of Chemical Education 57: 411 – 416.

References

• Obituary from Journal of the Chemical Society, (1920), volume 117, 1626 – 1648

• Sladen, Douglas, ed. (1897), , London: Adam & Charles Black, p. 656,