born Oct. 2, 1852, Glasgow, Scot. died July 23, 1916, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, Eng.
Ramsay, the only child of a civil engineer, decided at an early age that he would become a chemist. He studied at the University of Glasgow in Scotland (1866–70); during his final 18 months there he pursued additional studies in the laboratory of the city analyst, Robert Tatlock. In October 1870 he left Glasgow without taking a degree, intending to become a pupil of the German analytical chemist Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, but he abandoned this plan. Six months later, Ramsay became a doctoral student under the German organic chemist Rudolf Fittig at the University of Tübingen in Germany, where he received a doctorate in 1872.
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