Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Williams, Charles Hanson Greville
WILLIAMS, CHARLES HANSON GREVILLE (1829–1910), chemist, born at Cheltenham on 22 Sept. 1829, was only son of S. Hanson Williams, solicitor, of Cheltenham. His mother was Sophia, daughter of Thomas Billings, solicitor, of Cheltenham. After private education he obtained his first scientific employment as a consulting and analytical chemist (1852–3) in Oxford Court, Cannon Street, London, E.C. He then spent three years as assistant to Prof. Thomas Anderson at Glasgow University, and left to undertake work at Edinburgh University under Lyon (afterwards Lord) Playfair. Subsequently he was successively lecturer on chemistry in the Normal College, Swansea (1857–8); chemist to George Miller & Co., manufacturing chemists, at Glasgow; assistant to (Sir) William Henry Perkin at Greenford Green (1863–8); partner with Edward Thomas and John Dower at the Star Chemical Works, Brentford (1868–77); and chemist and photometric supervisor to the Gas Light and Coke Company, London (1877–1901).
Greville Williams's special studies were the volatile bases produced by the destructive distillation of certain shales, cinchonine, and one or two groups of hydrocarbons. He discovered cyanine or quinoline-blue (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. 1857), the first of the quinoline dye-stuffs. To him is due the isolation of the hydrocarbon isoprene (Phil. Trans. 1860).
To the ‘Journal of Gas Lighting’ he contributed many papers on the chemistry of coal-gas. In 1890 that journal described a method he had devised for producing artificial emeralds from the refuse of gas-retorts. To the Royal Society he sent in 1873 and 1877 two papers: ‘Researches on Emeralds and Beryls’; part i.: ‘On the Colouring-matter of the Emerald’ (Roy. Soc. Proc. vol. xxi.); and (part ii.). ‘On some of the Processes employed in the Analysis of Emeralds and Beryls’ (ib. vol. xxvi.). He showed that emeralds lost about 9 per cent. of their weight on fusion, the specific gravity being reduced to about 2.4. At a meeting of the British Association of Gas Managers (1890) he delivered a lecture on ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Coal Tar.’ Two years later he contributed to the Gas Institute a paper on ‘The Determination of the Specific Gravity of Gas.’
Greville Williams's independent publications were: ‘A Handbook of Chemical Manipulation’ (1857; Supplement, 1879) and ‘Manual of Chemical Analysis for Schools’ (1858). For King's ‘Treatise on Coal Gas’ he wrote the article ‘Tar and Tar Products,’ and he was a contributor to Watts' ‘Dictionary of Chemistry’ and other technical compilations. Williams was admitted to the Chemical Society on 16 Jan. 1862, and was made F.R.S. on 5 June 1862. A versatile conversationalist, he possessed literary and artistic tastes, and in the intervals of chemical research gave much attention to Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He died at his home, Bay Cottage, Smallfields, Horley, on 15 June 1910, and was buried at Streatham. He married on 25 Nov. 1852 Henrietta, daughter of Henry Bosher of Taunton (she predeceased him), and had issue four sons and four daughters.
[Proc. Roy. Soc. vol. lxxxv. A; Journ. of Gas Lighting, cx., cxi.; Journ. Soc. Chem. Industry, vol. xxix.; Athenæum, 25 June 1910; Poggendorff's Handwörterbuch, Bd. iii. (1898); Roy. Soc. Catal. Sci. Papers; Nature, 7 July 1910.]