The first two decades of William Ramsay's career were spent on a variety of comparatively insignificant studies, including work on the alkaloids, water loss in salts, the solubility of gases in solids, and a class of organic compounds known as the diketones. It was not until 1892 that he became engaged in the line of research for which he was eventually to win a Nobel Prize, the study of the inert gases . Those studies were to occupy Ramsay for most of the next decade and to win him worldwide fame for his participation in the discovery of five new chemical elements.

Ramsay was born on October 2, 1852, at Queen's Crescent, Glasgow, Scotland. He was the only child of William Ramsay, a civil engineer, and the former Catharine Robertson, who came from a family of physicians. In spite of this scientific background, young William showed no particular interest in the sciences...