Eric John Holmyard
Eric John Holmyard (11 July 1891 – 13 October 1959) was an English science teacher at Clifton College,[1] and historian of science and technology.
Scholar
Holmyard studied at
Geber. He was responsible with D. C. Mandeville for the re-attribution of the alchemical text De Mineralibus to an origin in Avicenna.[2] Holmyard served as the founding editor of the scientific review and history of science journal Endeavour
.
Textbooks
As a textbook author, he pioneered an approach to science teaching that included historical material. "His historicized science books were an enormous and long-term commercial success, with Elementary Chemistry (1925) alone selling half-a-million copies by 1960."[3]
Teacher
He taught both
Nevill Mott and Charles Coulson at Clifton, but his personal influence on them as scientists was low (in Coulson's case, even negative).[4] In contrast, he had a great impact on the future geneticist C. H. Waddington
, who followed in his footsteps by matriculating at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. Holmyard also published a best seller, A Higher School Inorganic Chemistry, along with W.G. Palmer.
Historical works
- Kitab al-‘Ilm al-maktasab fi zira‘at adh-dhahab: Book of knowledge acquired concerning the cultivation of gold by Abu 'l-Qasim Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-‘Iraqi (1923; translator)
- Chemistry to the Time of Dalton (1925)
- Avicenna De congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum (1927; translator with D. C. Mandeville)
- The Works of Geber (1928), with Richard Russell (1678 translator)
- Ordinall of Alchemy by Thomas Norton (1929; facsimile, editor)
- The Great Chemists (1929)
- Makers of Chemistry (1931)
- Ancestors of An Industry: The story of British scientific achievement (1950)
- British Scientists (1951)
- Alchemy (1957)
- A History of Technology (1954-8) five volumes, with Charles Singer
Notes
- ^ "Alchemy at Clifton College, Bristol, UK". Archived from the original on 2007-02-21. Retrieved 2007-02-08.
- ^ Liukkonen, Petri. "Avicenna". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 20 February 2007.
- S2CID 162156437.
- ^ [1]: … Holmyard — the prolific writer of elementary textbooks — apparently met with no success in attracting him towards Chemistry; indeed, he chose quite firmly the Classics.
References
- Entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
External links
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