RT Journal Article
T1 Lyon Playfair
A1 Ian Blatchford
YR 2021
VO 15
IS Spring 2021
K1 Lyon Playfair
K1  chemistry
K1  politics
K1  biography
K1  University of Edinburgh
K1  Justus Liebig
K1  Great Exhibition
AB Lyon Playfair was a multi-talented man: a scientist, administrator and politician whose life and influence deserve further research. This article concentrates on the period between 1818 and 1858, from Playfair’s birth to his appointment as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. His biographer (Sir Thomas Wemyss Reid) described his life as a ‘story not of adventure, but work’ and yet his record was one of energetic enterprise that had considerable impact. He was a rising star in the then fashionable world of chemistry, a favoured student of the founder of organic chemistry, Justus Liebig, and a central figure in the promotion of new ideas in agricultural science.[1] A career in science and the state saw him connected to the leading figures of both, and he played a crucial role in the conceptual and financial success of the Great Exhibition, and its legacy. His brilliance has been overshadowed by the extrovert Henry Cole, and yet Playfair was essential to the major educational reforms of their time.
NO Justus Liebig did not become a baron until 1845 and so is not referred to in this article as Justus von Liebig.
NO This article was developed from a lecture (‘Lyon Playfair: Chemist and Commissioner’) given by the author at the Chemistry in Albertopolis conference on 11 April 2019. The conference formed part of a series of events organised by the Science Museum’s Research and Public History Department. These were part of wider celebrations by the cultural organisations of ‘Albertopolis’ to mark the bicentenary of the birthdays of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, and the International Year of the Periodic Table, invented by Dmitri Mendeleev 150 years earlier. The series of events aimed to explore how chemistry took root, flowered and continues to flourish in the cultural and scientific quarter of South Kensington. Key partners were the Science Museum, Imperial College, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Albert Hall and the Natural History Museum.
NO The major biography of Henry Cole (The Great Exhibitor: The Life and Work of Henry Cole) was published in 2003 by Elizabeth Bonython and Anthony Burton. Inevitably, Cole also features very prominently in Burton’s landmark history of the Victoria and Albert Museum (Vision and Accident: The Story of the V&A).
NO Armstrong wrote in 1976 of the need for a new biography too.
NO Professor Thomas Duncan, Chair of Mathematics (1820–1858)
NO Frustratingly, Playfair only refers to his fellow clerk by surname. I am grateful to my research assistant, Katie Dowler, for tracking down the details of Andrew Ramsay’s two brothers: William (born 1811) and John (born 1816), who would have been 24 and 19 respectively at the time Playfair was clerking in Glasgow; and so John seems the likely candidate as the most similar in age to Playfair (17). See: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-support-services/records-and-archives/public/Ramsay,-Professor-Sir-Andrew-Crombie-FRS-catalogue-of-papers.pdf, pp 18–19 and 11–12 of the text.
NO In this context dialysis refers to the method by which large molecules and small molecules can be separated. The principle was used in the development, very much later than Graham, of kidney dialysis in the mid twentieth century. Playfair cites Graham’s work on water crystallisation, the diffusion of gases and the modification of phosphoric acid as being ‘classical examples of investigation’. In 1831, Graham had given a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in which he showed that, at constant pressure, the rate of diffusion of gas was inversely proportional to the square root of its density – a principle that has become known as ‘Graham’s Law’. A fuller account can be in found in his Dictionary of National Biography entry (Michael Stanley).
NO Playfair gives no detailed explanation for his affliction and so I am grateful to Dr Roger Highfield (Science Director, Science Museum) and Natasha McEnroe (Keeper of Medicine) for some interpretation. It is possible that Playfair may have been using methylated spirit (rather than formalin, which came in to use from the 1890s), which has evidenced links to dermatitis. However, in the 1830s it was not yet common practice to preserve cadavers, although a chlorate of lime was used to wash the bodies and reduce smell. It was used at this time more generally as an anti-putrefaction agent and could cause skin irritation. We might also speculate on eczema’s links to emotional well-being because hospitals and dissecting rooms could be highly stressful places at this time.
NO From the sparse details Playfair provides one can ascertain that this circle included Sir John McClelland (geologist), Nathaniel Wallich (botanist) and the leading oriental antiquarian James Prinsep. Playfair does not tell us anything about the origins of such encounters although one could speculate that the offices of the Asiatic Society might well have played a central role.
NO Liebig to Playfair, 6 November 1841
NO Augustus Granville (1783–1872), see entry in Dictionary of National Biography (Omella Moscucci).
NO I am most grateful for my colleague Robert Bud for alerting me to these important omissions in Playfair’s account of this period.
NO The comment is from Reid.
NO Henry de la Beche to William Buckland
NO Other attendees included the agricultural engineer James Smith of Deanston, and Philip Pusey, then Editor of the Agricultural Societies Journal.
NO Playfair visited Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Ashton-under-Lyne, Bolton, Bury and Rochdale.
NO Bunsen to Playfair
NO Colonel Grey to Playfair
NO Sir Charles Phipps to Prince Albert, 17 October 1851 RA VIC/F25/52
NO Dickens to Playfair
NO Playfair quotes from Prince Albert’s rough memorandum (August 1851) on the disposal of the surplus of the Great Exhibition.
NO Playfair to Henry de la Beche, 20 August 1851
NO Playfair to Cole, March 1853, Cole Papers (Correspondence), Box 15, Victoria and Albert Museum
NO Colonel Grey to Playfair, 18 November 1851
NO Playfair to Cole
NO Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, 27 November 2017
PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/211504
UL http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-15/lyon-playfair/
CR Armstrong, C, 1976, ‘Introduction’ to a limited edition (250) reprint of the Memoirs (Jemimaville Scotland: P.M. Pollak, Science Reprints)
CR Auerbach, J, 1999, The Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p 40
CR Beche, H de la and Playfair, L, 1845, Report on the State of Bristol and Other Large Towns, Health of Towns Commission (London: William Clowes and Sons), pp 1–24
CR Bonython, E and Burton, A, 2003, The Great Exhibitor: The Life and Work of Henry Cole (London: V&A Publications), p 158
CR Brock, W H, 1977, Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper (Cambridge University Press), p vii and ix
CR Bryant, J, 2011, Art and Design for All: The Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications), p 27
CR Bud, R F, 1980, The Discipline of Chemistry: The origins and early years of the Chemical Society of London (University of Pennsylvania, PhD Thesis), pp 198–205
CR Bud, R and Roberts, G K, 1984, Science Versus Practice: Chemistry in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University press), p 88
CR Burton, A, 1999, Vision and Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications), p 43
CR Butterworth, H, 1968, The Science and Art Department, 1853–1900 (PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, July), Vol 1
CR Campbell, J, 2020, Haldane: The Forgotten Statesman Who Shaped Modern Britain (London: Hurst & Company)
CR Cardwell, D S L, 1972, The Organisation of Science in England (London: Heinemann, revised edition), pp 59–64
CR Correspondence of Henry Cole, 1858, Victoria and Albert Museum, 29 June
CR Crowther, J G, 1865, Statesmen of Science (London: The Cresset Press), pp 105–171
CR Davies, H, 2004, ‘Robinson, Sir John Charles (1824–1913)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press)
CR Fruton, J F, 1988, ‘The Liebig Research Group’, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, March, Vol 132, No 1, pp 1–66
CR Granville, A B, 1841, The Spas of England (London: Henry Colburn), pp 363–366
CR Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations: Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, 1851 (London: William Clowes and Sons), p ix
CR Hans Renders, B de H and Harmsma, J, 2017, ‘The Biographical turn: Biography as critical method in the humanities and in society’, The Biographical Turn: Lives in History (London and New York: Routledge)
CR Hartog, P J, 2004, ‘Wilson, George’, Dictionary of National Biography
CR Industrial Instruction on the Continent, 1852 (London: Eyre and Spottiswood), pp 26–28
CR Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 1854, March, Vol 17, No 1, p 46
CR Liebig, J, 1847, Chemistry and its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology (London: Taylor and Walton, 4th Edition), Trans. Lyon Playfair, in the Dedication to the British Association of the Advancement of Science
CR Moore, T, and Philip, J, The Chemical Society, 1941–1941: A Historical Review (London: The Chemical Society), p 29
CR Norrish, R G W, 1951, ‘Lyon Playfair and his work for the Great Exhibition of 1851’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 1 June, Vol 99, No 4848, pp 540–1
CR PCP, Nos 112–117
CR PCP, No 209 – Henry de la Beche to William Buckland, 12 October 1842
CR PCP, No 524 – Sir Robert Peel, 18 October 1842
CR PCP, No 770 – Colonel Grey to Playfair, 19 October 1851
CR PCP, No 938 – Faraday to Playfair, 10 October 1842
CR PCP (Sir James Graham), No 956 and No 311
CR PCP, No 980, 5 February 1854
CR Playfair, L, Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition of 1851, p 204
CR Playfair, L, 1853, An Address to Students of People’s College, Sheffield – October 26 (Sheffield: printed by Robert Leader)
CR Playfair, L, 1852, ‘The chemical principles involved in the manufactures of the Exhibition’, in Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition (London: David Boque), p 166
CR Playfair, L, 1852, ‘On the National Importance of Studying Abstract Science with a view of the Healthy Progress of Industry’, An introductory lecture in the course of the chemistry session 1851–2 (London: Museum of Practical Geology; Eye and Spottiswoode)
CR Playfair to Ramsay, 29 March 1842, in Ramsay Archive at National Library of Wales (NLW MS 11574D, No 11)
CR Reid, W, 1899, Memoirs and Correspondence of Lyon Playfair (London: Cassell and Company), p 6
CR Report of the Commissioners for Inquiry into the State of Large Towns and Populous Districts, 1844, 2 Report, Vol 1 (London: William Clowes and Sons), pp 345–481
CR Royal Society Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased, 1875–1876, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol 24, pp xxvii–xxxvii
CR Waterhouse, R, 1954, The Birmingham and Midland Institute 1854–1954 (Birmingham), pp 25–56
WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30