Thomas Andrews

Born in Belfast, Thomas Andrews studied in Scotland, France and at Trinity College Dublin, before setting up a medical practice in Belfast. He then became professor of chemistry in the newly founded Queen’s College, a post he held from 1849 – 1879.

He carried out accurate experiments on heats of neutralisation, formation and reaction and on latent heats of evaporation. He was the first to use a “bomb-calorimeter” – a closed metal vessel in which a mixture of gases could be electrically exploded. He demonstrated that ozone was a form of oxygen.

But his major contribution to science was his identification, in 1861, of a critical temperature for gases, above which they could not be liquefied by pressure alone. He wrote: “We may yet live to see…such bodies as oxygen and hydrogen in the liquid, perhaps even in the solid state”. He was right, and liquid and solid gases have since had dramatic impacts on scientific and technological development. He was offered a knighthood in 1880, but declined on the grounds of ill-health.