[3] From early years Gladstone had shown strong religious tendencies, and when, at the age of seventeen, the question of his future career came to be discussed, he wished to enter the Christian ministry.

Here he attended Graham's lectures on chemistry and worked in his private laboratory, and here he prepared his earliest scientific contribution on "Analysis of Sand from St. Michael's Bay, Normandy", which was read at a meeting of the Royal Chemical Society on 16 November 1846.

Later in the same year he went to University of Giessen to work under Justus von Liebig, returning in April 1848 with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

James Hill's Congregational Church, and here he taught in the Sunday School, beside conducting services in a Mission Room at White Square.

[2] In 1850 Gladstone was appointed Lecturer in Chemistry to St. Thomas's Hospital, a post which he held for two years, and in June 1853, at the unusually young age of 26, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

at the celebration of the Tercentenary of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1892, and the Davy Medal from the Royal Society in 1897 "for his numerous contributions to chemical science, and especially for his important work in the application of optical methods to chemistry".

In 1880 he became a member of the Company of Wheelwrights, and as a liveryman took part in the last year of his life in the election of the Lord Mayor, at the Guildhall, on Michaelmas Day.

On the day of his death, 6 October 1902, he presided in the afternoon at a meeting of the Christian Evidence Society, and, after walking part of the way home, was found lifeless in his study as the result of failure of the heart.

Soc., 1O, 79), and discovered distinct lines in the absorption spectrum of didymium, a substance long afterwards resolved by Auer von Welsbach into the two elements known as praseodymium and neodymium.

[2] Another memorable series of researches commenced about 1872, in conjunction with his assistant Alfred Tribe, resulted in the discovery of the zinc-copper couple, and its application to the production of the organozinc compounds and to other purposes.

The couple has long since found its way into every laboratory in the world, and as a reducing agent has met with applications not only in connection with carbon compounds but for many purposes in analysis.