Edinburgh, Scotland/edinburgh411
Previous | Home | NextThis was Daniel Rutherford's House in his last twenty years, located "midway up South Gray's Close," about 300 meters northeast of the College on North Bridge. Sir Walter Scott, who was Rutherford's nephew, frequented the house in his younger days. In these days there was a great deal of open area; now the neighborhood is crowded.
Rutherford is known not only for his discovery of nitrogen, but his invention of the maximum-minimum thermometer. His discovery of nitrogen was performed for his M.D. dissertation, where he removed "fixed air" from gas expelled by animals or humans and found there still remained a gas which would not support respiration nor combustion. Because this was before Lavoisier's New Chemistry, Black and Rutherford believed in phlogiston, and Rutherford considered his gas to be "dephlogisticated air."
