1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Brande, William Thomas

BRANDE, WILLIAM THOMAS (1788–1866), English chemist, was born in London on the 11th of January 1788. After leaving Westminster school, he was apprenticed, in 1802, to his brother, an apothecary, with the view of adopting the profession of medicine, but his bent was towards chemistry, a sound knowledge of which he acquired in his spare time. In 1812 he was appointed professor of chemistry to the Apothecaries' Society, and delivered a course of lectures before the Board of Agriculture in place of Sir Humphry Davy, whom in the following year he succeeded in the chair of chemistry at the Royal Institution, London. His Manual of Chemistry, first published in 1819, enjoyed wide popularity, and among other works he brought out a Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art in 1842, on a new edition of which he was engaged when he died at Tunbridge Wells on the 11th of February 1866.