George E. Davis (1850-1907) is regarded as the founding father of the discipline of Chemical Engineering. Chemical engineering is the branch of Engineering that deals with the application of Physical science (e
Davis identified broad features in common to all chemical factories and wrote the influential A Handbook of Chemical Engineering. He also published a famous lecture series of 12 lectures, given in 1888 at Manchester Technical School (which became UMIST). The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology ( UMIST) was a University based in the centre of the City of Manchester These lectures defined Chemical Engineering as a discipline.
His lectures were criticized for being common place know-how since it was designed around operating practices used by British chemical industries. At this time, however, in the United States, this information helped initiate new thinking in the Chemical Industry, as well as spark Chemical Engineering degree programmes at several universities in the US.
Davis was born at Eton on 27 July 1850, the eldest son of George Davis a bookseller. Eton is a Town in Berkshire, England, lying on the opposite bank of the River Thames to Windsor and connected to it by Windsor At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a local bookbinder but he abandoned this trade after two years to pursue his interest in chemistry. Apprenticeship is a system of Training a new generation of practitioners of a skill Davis studied at the Slough Mechanics Institute while working at the local gas works, and then spend a year studying at Royal School of Mines in London (now part of Imperial College, London) before leaving to work in the chemical industry around Manchester, which at the time was the main centre of the chemical industry in the UK. Imperial College London (officially The Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine as given in its Royal Charter It is one of only three universities to have reached He worked as a chemist at Brearley and Sons for three years. He also worked as an inspector for the Alkali Act of 1863, a very early piece of environmental legislation that required soda manufacturers to reduce the amount of gaseous hydrochloric acid released to the atmosphere from their factories. Under the British Alkali Act 1863, an Alkali Inspector and four subinspectors were appointed to curb discharge into the air of hydrochloric Gas from the Hydrochloric acid is the Solution of Hydrogen chloride ( H[[Chlorine Cl]] in water In 1872 he was engaged as manager at the Lichfield Chemical Company in Staffordshire. Staffordshire (abbreviated Staffs) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. In this job his capacity for innovation flourished. His works included what was at the time the tallest chimney in the UK, with a height of more than 200 feet. A chimney is a system for venting hot Flue gases or Smoke from a Boiler, Stove, Furnace or Fireplace to the outside
Davis was also instrumental in the formation of the Society of Chemical Industry (1881), which he had wanted to name the Society of Chemical Engineering.
In the entrance to Jackson's Mill, the building that houses the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences, University of Manchester, there is a display and memorial to Davis. The School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences (CEAS University of Manchester was formed by the merger in 2004 of the former UMIST departments of Chemical The George E. Davis Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers is named in his honour. IChemE The Institution of Chemical Engineers ( IChemE) is an international professional engineering institution with members in over 113 countries worldwide founded
External links
References
- Don Freshwater, 'Davis, George Edward (1850-1907)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004accessed 30 April 2007. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37345
- D. A digital object identifier ( DOI) is a permanent identifier given to an Electronic document. C. Freshwater, 'George E. Davis, Norman Swindin and the empirical tradition in chemical engineering', Advances in Chemistry, 190 (1980)
- N. Swindin, 'George E. Davis memorial lecture', Transactions of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, 31 (1953)
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