Ramsay
Ramsay names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Ramsay ANDREW MICHAEL, known as the CHEVALIER RAMSAY
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ANDREW MICHAEL, known as the CHEVALIER RAMSAY, a Scotch-French writer; born in Ayr, Scotland, Jan. 9, 1686. After spending some time at the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, he went to Leyden. In 1710 he repaired to Cambray, where he was converted to the Roman Catholic faith by Fénelon. He procured the preceptorship to the Duke of Château-Thierry and the Prince of Turenne, and was afterward engaged to superintend the education of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his brother Henry, afterward Cardinal York. He acquired distinction by his writ of writings. The chief these are a "Life of Viscount Turenne," a "Life of Fénelon," the "Travels of Cyrus," a romance, and a large work on the "Principles of Natural and Re vealed Religion." He died in St. Germain-en-Laye, France, May 6, 1743.
Ramsay SIR WILLIAM, a British scientist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SIR WILLIAM, a British scientist; born in Glasgow in 1852. He received his doctor's degree at Tübingen when he was but 20 years of age, and a few years later became Professor of Chemistry at the University College, Bristol. In 1887 he was appointed to the chair of chemistry in the University College, London, a position he held until he retired in 1913. He made several important discoveries in chemistry, mostly in connection with air, discovering argon, RAMSBOttom neon, xenon, and krypton, all constituhas written ents of the atmosphere. He several important works, among them "The Gases of the Atmosphere: the History of Their Discovery" (1905); "Introduction to the Study of Physical Chemistry"; "Elements of Electrons." He died in 1916.
Ramsay ALLAN, a Scotch poet
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ALLAN, a Scotch poet; born in Leadhills, Lanarkshire, Scotland, Oct. 15, 1685. In early youth, he was sent to Edinburgh, and there bound apprentice to a wig-maker. In 1712, he produced his first poetic effusion, and in 1716, commenced business as a bookseller in Edinburgh. In 1720, he published a collection of his fugitive poems, which realized a considerable sum; and in 1724 he issued the first volume of his wellknown "Tea-Table Miscellany." His fame, however, reached its acme on the production of "The Gentle Shepherd," one of the finest dramatic pastorals ever penned. Some of the higher class poems of Burns alone can compete with it in this respect. Ramsay died in Edinburgh, Jan. 7, 1758.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's 1921 list of Sir William Ramsay's discoveries — "argon, neon, xenon, and krypton" — leaves out two of his biggest: with Morris Travers he identified terrestrial helium in 1895, and with Frederick Soddy and Robert Whytlaw-Gray he isolated radon, and the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to him for the noble gases as a group. The great reversal came in 1962, when Neil Bartlett made xenon hexafluoroplatinate and destroyed the assumption, central to Ramsay's era, that these gases could form no compounds at all. Of the other two Ramsays, the factual accounts still stand, though critics no longer place Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd" in Burns's company; he is valued now chiefly for preserving older Scots songs, while the Chevalier Ramsay is remembered as much for his 1737 oration tracing Freemasonry to the crusaders as for the "Travels of Cyrus."
Written for this edition, 2026.