George Bowdler Buckton


George Bowdler Buckton was an English chemist and entomologist who specialised in aphids.
Early Life
Buckton was born in......London and lived in Hornsey, England, the eldest son of George Buckton and Eliza Buckton. At the age of five he had an accvident which left him partially paralysed for the rest of his long life; this precluded attendance at school so he was privately educated. He was however a scholar of classics and was an accomplished musician and painter. After his father's death he moved to Queen's Road, West London, and In 1848 he became an assistant to August Wilhelm von Hofmann at the nearby Royal College of Chemistry in London., , In 1867 he married Mary Ann Odling, the sister of William Odling with whom he had written his last chemical paper. He designed his house at Haslemere and built an observatory there.
Research in Chemistry
His first paper, on reactions of cyanogen with platinum ammine complexes, appeared in 1852. He wrote two papers with Hofmann on reactions of sulfuric acid with amides and nitriles. on 'Deportment of Diplatosamines with Cyanogen' wrote scientific papers on chemistry until 1865 when he moved to Haslemere and started to study Hemiptera. In 1867, he was elected a member of the Royal Society. He wrote:
Personality
Of him, Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote that Buckton had " Truly a devoted, spiritual, knightly nature, with a faith as clear as the height of the pure blue heaven."

1. W. F. Kirby, "George Bowdler Buckton 1818-1905," ''Proc. Roy. Soc. Ser. B'' 1907, '''51''', xlv - xlviii; https://www.jstor.org/stable/80046

2. J. Spiller, "George Bowdler Buckton". ''J. Chem. Soc., Trans.'' 1907, '''91''':663–665. https://doi.org/10.1039/CT9079100660.

3. R. Steele ''rev.'' Y. Foote, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32160 "Buckton, George Bowdler (1818 - 1905)", [Dictionary of National Biography],https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/32160

4. G. B. Buckton and W. Odling, “Preliminary note on some aluminium compounds”, ''Proc. Roy Soc.'' 1865, '''14,''' 19 – 21; https://doi.org/10.1098/rspl.1865.0006

5. G. B. Buckton, “Observations upon the deportment of diplatosamine with cyanogen”, ''Quart. J. Chem. Soc. Lond.,'' 1852, '''4''', 26 – 34; https://doi.org/10.1039/QJ8520400026.

6. G. B. Buckton and A. W. Hofmann. 1856. Researches on the action of sulphuric acid on the amides and nitriles, together with some remarks upon conjugated sulpho-acids. ''Phil. Trans. R. Soc.,'' 1856, '''9''', 453–459. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1856.0021.

7. D. Seyferth, “The Rise and Fall of Tetraethyllead. 1. Discovery and Slow Development in European Universities, 1853-1920”. ''Organometallics'' 2003, '''22''', 2346 – 2357; https://doi.org/10.1021/om030245v.

8. J. W. Nicholson, “The Early History of Organotin Chemistry”, ''J. Chem. Ed.'' 1989, '''66''', 621 – 623; https://doi.org/10.1021/ed066p621