He studied at Queen's College, Belfast and then the College of Science in London before undertaking postgraduate study at Würzburg in central Germany where he gained his doctorate (PhD).
He then went to the University of Edinburgh to work as Professor Alexander Crum Brown's assistant.
His proposers were Alexander Crum Brown, Peter Guthrie Tait, Robert Milner Robertson, and Sir William Turner.
[2] He translated Albert Ladenburg's Lectures on the Development of the History of Chemistry since the time of Lavoisier into English in 1900.
In later life he lived at 6 Wilton Road in south Edinburgh, close to the university's science facilities at Kings Buildings.