Sir Robert Kane, LL.D., F.R.S

Abstract

SIR ROBERT KANE was born on September 24, 1810, in Dublin. This was the fiftieth year of King George III. and the tenth of the Union. Shortly afterwards his father established chemical works on the North Wall, by the side of the River Liffey, which in time developed into important and well-known sulphuric acid and alkali works. His mother was Ellen Troy, of whose family Dr. Troy, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, was a member. Sir Robert Kane very early in his life developed a taste for chemical knowledge, and in 1828 his first paper, “On the Existence of Chlorine in the Native Peroxide of Manganese,” was published, and followed by a series of contributions on kindred themes. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1829, and proceeded to his B.A. degree in the spring commencements of 1835, taking the LL. D. in the summer of 1868. In 1834 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy to the Dublin (now the Royal Dublin) Society, and he at this period devoted himself with great ardour to original research in the field of chemistry, as the long list of his papers in the Royal Society's list will testify. He studied in Germany during his summer vacations under both Liebig and Mitscherlich, and passed some time under Dumas at Paris. In 1831 he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy; he was Secretary of its Council from 1842 to 1846, and was elected President in 1877. In 1849 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society; shortly afterwards he was selected by the Government as head of the Museum of Irish Industry, which post he held until appointed the first President of the Queen's College, Cork. He was a Fellow of the King and Queen's College of Physicians, Ireland, a Commissioner of National Education, and a Justice of the Peace, Ireland.