Crookes

William, an English electrician and chemist. He was born in London June 17, 1832. He was educated at Oxford. At thirty-one he was a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1897 he was knighted for brilliant discoveries in physics. He is the author of a number of practical works pertaining to the manufacture of beet root sugar, dyeing, the sewage question, etc. He is best known, however, as the inventor of Crookes' tubes. They are sealed glass bulbs or tubes from which the air has been exhausted to a high degree of rarefaction. Sir William Crookes discovered that by passing electrical currents through these tubes they were lighted up brilliantly with green, pink, and many other colors, highly suggestive of the northern lights. See X RAYS.