William Thomas Brande

William Thomas Brande was an English chemist, born in Arlington Street, London, in 1788 and dying at Tunbridge Wells in 1866. The youngest son of an apothecary, he was apprenticed to his brother and studied medicine before a meeting with Humphry Davy drew him to chemistry. His articles of 1811 on the measurement of alcohol in fermented drinks showed that alcohol is present in wine, cider and ale from the start rather than formed by distillation. He became professor of chemistry to the Apothecaries' Society in 1812, succeeded Davy in the chair of chemistry at the Royal Institution the next year, and in 1821 was the first to isolate lithium, by electrolysis of lithium oxide. From about 1823 he worked with the Royal Mint, becoming Superintendent of the Coining and Die Department, and he wrote the widely read Manual of Chemistry of 1819 and a Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art in 1842.