Samuel Morison Brown
Encyclopedia
Samuel Morison Brown Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 chemist, poet and essayist, born at Haddington, East Lothian
Haddington, East Lothian
The Royal Burgh of Haddington is a town in East Lothian, Scotland. It is the main administrative, cultural and geographical centre for East Lothian, which was known officially as Haddingtonshire before 1921. It lies about east of Edinburgh. The name Haddington is Anglo-Saxon, dating from the 6th...

, was the fourth son of Samuel Brown, the founder of itinerating libraries, and grandson of John Brown
John Brown (theologian)
John Brown of Haddington , was a Scottish divine and author. His works include “The Self-Interpreting Bible”, “The Dictionary of the Bible”, and “A General History of the Christian Church”.-Career:...

, author of the Self-Interpreting Bible. In 1832 he entered the university of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, where, after studying in Berlin and St. Petersburg, he graduated as MD in 1839. About 1840 he was engaged in experiments by which he sought to prove that carbon in certain states of combination is susceptible of conversion into silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...

, and his failure to establish this proposition had much to do with his want of success as a candidate for the chair of chemistry at Edinburgh in 1843. He held the doctrine that the chemical elements are compounds of equal and similar atoms, and might therefore possibly be all derived from one generic atom. In 1850 he published a tragedy, Galileo Galilei, and two volumes of his Lectures on the Atomic Theory and Essays Scientific and Literary appeared in 1858, with a preface by his kinsman Dr. John Brown
John Brown (physician)
John Brown FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish physician and essayist. He was the son of the clergyman John Brown , and was born in Biggar, Scotland. He is best known for his 3 volume collection Horae Subsecivae—"Leisure Hours" , including essays and papers on art, medical history and biography...

, the author of Horae Subsecivae. He died at Edinburgh on the 20th of September 1856.
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