Edward Turner (chemist)

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Edward Turner FRS FRSE FRCPE (1796–1837) was a Jamaican-born British physician and chemist who helped popularize Dalton’s atomic theory. He wrote a popular chemistry textbook that was the first to include chemical symbols, formulae, and organic chemistry.

Born on 24 June 1796 at Teak Pen, Clarendon, Jamaica, he was the eldest of nine children of plantation owners Dutton Smith Turner and Mary Gale Redwar. His family moved to Bath, England, where he attended Bath Grammar School. He and his younger brother William studied at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, earning MDs in 1819 and 1820. Edward then began a medical practice in Bath, spent some time in Paris, and then switched to experimental science.

From 1821 to 1823 he studied at Göttingen University under Friedrich Stromeyer, focusing on inorganic chemistry and mineralogy. He returned to Edinburgh as a lecturer in 1823, establishing a chemistry course with laboratory work. In 1827 he became the first Professor of Chemistry at University College London and also lectured in geology, remaining in these roles until his death.

Turner was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1825 and Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1830. In 1836 he became a member of the American Philosophical Society. He died on 12 February 1837 at his London home and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery.

A marble bust by Timothy Butler was placed at University College London and now sits in the Turner Laboratory in the Christopher Ingold Building.

Turner’s major writings include Introduction to the Study of the Laws of Chemical Combination and the Atomic Theory (1825), which evolved into Elements of Chemistry (1827) through eight editions. He published about forty papers, including work on manganese ores and oxides. His key contribution was in the study of atomic weights. Inspired by Prout and Thomson, he showed errors in Thomson’s 1825 work and found results that agreed with Berzelius, concluding that Prout’s idea of all atomic weights being simple whole-number multiples of hydrogen was untenable.