James Ballantyne Hannay FRSE(1855–1931) was a Scottish chemist who believed he had synthesized diamond in 1880.
[1] However, modern testing showed that the surviving samples from his experiments were natural diamond, not synthetic.
[3] James Ballantyne Hannay was born at 22 Monteith Row[4] in Glasgow on New Year's Day, 1855.
His most controversial scientific work, which was also his best known, related to his claim, made in 1880, that he had successfully synthesised diamonds.
[6] In the later years of his life Hannay turned away from scientific investigation and moved his attention to examining aspects of the origin and development of religion and published a number of works critical of the Hebrew Scriptures.