:William Thomas Brande

Brande was born in Arlington Street, London, England, the youngest son of six children to Augustus Everard Brande an apothecary, originally from Hanover in Germany.{{cite web|url=http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/William_Thomas_Brande|title=William Thomas Brande|publisher=gracesguide.co.uk|access-date=2016-08-16}} He was educated first in Kensington and then in Westminster.{{Cite web |url=http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=11 May 2015 |archive-date=19 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919152306/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |url-status=dead }}

After leaving Westminster School, he was apprenticed, in 1802, to his brother, an apothecary, with the view of adopting the profession of medicine.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

He studied medicine at Great Windmill Street Medical School and at St George's Hospital, before being drawn to chemistry following a meeting with Humphry Davy.{{cite web|url=http://www.rigb.org/our-history/people/b/william-brande|title=William Thomas Brande (1788-1866) | The Royal Institution: Science Lives Here|publisher=rigb.org|access-date=2016-08-16}} He then began to lecture in chemistry, based on a sound knowledge of which he acquired in his spare time.

In 1811 he published the first of what were to be two very influential articles on the measurement of alcohol in fermented drinks, including wine, cider and ale.Brande, William Thomas. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/107349 'Experiments to Ascertain the State in Which Spirit Exists in Fermented Liquors: With a Table Exhibiting the Relative Proportion of Pure Alcohol Contained in Several Kinds of Wine and Some Other Liquors.'] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 101, 1811, pp. 337–346. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/107349.Brande, William Thomas. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/107392 'Additional Remarks on the State in Which Alcohol Exists in Fermented Liquors.'] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 103, 1813, pp. 82–87. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/107392. Until that point chemists had only been able to measure alcohol in distilled drinks (brandy, gin etc.), which many early temperance reformers had assumed to be a poison. By showing that alcohol was present in fermented drinks from the start (rather than being a by-product of the distillation process), Brande undermined the long-standing view that spirits were toxic, while wine and beer were more wholesome. These findings were later propagated by the Temperance movement and used to justify total alcoholic abstinence, or teetotalism.[https://books.google.com/books?id=2bowDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17 Richard Mendelson, From Demon to Darling: A Legal History of Wine in America, (University of California Press, 2009) p. 17.]

In 1812 he was appointed professor of chemistry to the Apothecaries' Society, and delivered a course of lectures before the Board of Agriculture in place of Sir Humphry Davy, whom in the following year he succeeded in the chair of chemistry at the Royal Institution, London.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} In 1821 he was the first to isolate the element lithium, which he did by electrolysis of lithium oxide.A Manual of Chemistry: Containing the Principal Facts of the Science, Arranged in the Order in which They are Discussed and Illustrated in the Lectures at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, William Thomas Brande and William James MacNeven, 1821, 2nd Ed., Vol. 2, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ERgAAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA57 p. 57].

From about 1823 onwards, Brande worked increasingly with the Royal Mint, eventually becoming Superintendent of the Coining and Die Department.{{cite web|url=http://www.rigb.org/our-history/people/b/william-brande|title=William Thomas Brande (1788-1866) | The Royal Institution: Science Lives Here|publisher=rigb.org|access-date=2016-08-16}}

Brande's Manual of Chemistry, first published in 1819, enjoyed wide popularity, and among other works he brought out a Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art in 1842. He was working on a new edition when he died at Tunbridge Wells.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

He contributed articles to Rees's Cyclopædia on Chemistry, but the topics are not known.{{Citation needed|date=August 2020}}

In 1834, 1836, 1839, 1842, 1844, 1847 and 1850 Brande was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Chemistry; Chemistry of the Gases; The Chemistry of the Atmosphere and the Ocean; The Chemistry of the Non-Metallic Elements; The Chemistry of the Gases; The Elements of Organic Chemistry and The Chemistry of Coal respectively.

• Outlines of Geology (1817)
• Manual of Chemistry (1819)
• Manual of Pharmacy (1825)
• Dictionary of Materia Medica (1839)
• Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art (1842)
• Organic Chemistry (1854)

He married Anna Frederica Hatchett, daughter of the eminent chemist Charles Hatchett in July 1818.{{Cite web |url=http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=11 May 2015 |archive-date=19 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919152306/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |url-status=dead }}

Brande died in Tunbridge Wells in 1866,{{Cite web |url=http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=11 May 2015 |archive-date=19 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919152306/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf |url-status=dead }} and is buried in West Norwood Cemetery, London (grave 1177, square 98).

{{reflist}}

• [https://books.google.com/books?id=tKsOAAAAIAAJ&dq=william+thomas+brande+obituary&pg=PP13 Obituary] – from Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, volume XVI, 1868, pages ii – vi (at end of volume)
• {{DNB Cite|wstitle=Brande, William Thomas}}
• [http://www.fownc.org/newsletters/no47.shtml Material on Brande's life and death] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130607085601/http://www.fownc.org/newsletters/no47.shtml |date=7 June 2013 }} by Frank James
• {{EB1911|wstitle=Brande, William Thomas|volume=4|page=420}}

{{Copley Medallists 1801–1850}}

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Category:1788 births

Category:1866 deaths

Category:Scientists from London

Category:English chemists

Category:English people of German descent

Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal

Category:People educated at Westminster School, London

Category:Burials at West Norwood Cemetery

Category:18th-century English people

Category:19th-century English people

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society