Edward Turner (chemist)

After spending some time in Paris he decided to change from Medicine to experimental science and, starting in June 1821, he studied for two years at Göttingen University under Friedrich Stromeyer, working on inorganic chemistry and mineralogy.

A marble bust of him by Timothy Butler was placed in University College London by his pupils and is now in the Turner Laboratory in the Christopher Ingold Building in Gordon Street.

Turner was the author of a concise Introduction to the Study of the Laws of Chemical Combination and the Atomic Theory (1825), developed into Elements of Chemistry (1827), a work which ran through eight editions.

Stimulated by Prout's hypothesis, and by the experimental work by which Thomas Thomson in 1825 sought to confirm it, Turner examined the question for himself.

In two papers published in the Philosophical Transactions (1829 p. 291, and 1833 p. 523) he pointed out sources of error in Thomson's work, and obtained results which agreed with those of Berzelius.