George Gerald Henderson 1862-1942

Abstract

If the story of George Gerald Henderson be told merely as a chronological record there would remain for our successors an imperfect picture of a very remarkable man. He was a Scot, and received his scientific education at the University of Glasgow ; in succession he held a lectureship and two professorships of chemistry in his native city and he died full of years in the land he loved. The story as thus told suggests that his life’s work was spent in a limited sphere; but that is true only in a geographical sense, for his influence spread far afield and in his day he was recognized as one of the most prominent figures in British chemistry. It will be generally conceded that the period when the nineteenth century merged into the twentieth was a critical time in the development of science in this country. Opportunities for scientific education were expanding rapidly, facilities for original research were becoming more widely available, and the investigator was no longer a solitary worker. These were profound changes, and no country—least of all a small country such as Scotland, firmly wedded to long-established educational tradition—could take a profitable part in what we must regard as an educational revolution, in the absence of wise scientific leadership. That role was played by G. G. Henderson and he played it supremely well. While it is a pious duty, willingly undertaken, to pay tribute to his life’s work, it is difficult for me to speak freely of him as a man, for I was bound to him by ties closer than those which usually link master and disciple.