Thomas Stewart Patterson

Thomas Stewart Patterson FRSE LLD (1872–1949) was a Scottish organic chemist, especially known for his work on stereochemistry.

Early life and education He was born in Greenock on 3 July 1872, but his family came to Edinburgh in his youth and he was then educated at Merchiston Castle School. He then studied Chemistry at Andersonian college in Glasgow under Prof William Dittmar.

He then went to Heidelberg where he gained his first doctorate (PhD) in 1896. He was greatly influenced there by Victor Meyer. Returning to Britain, he was the first Priestley scholar at the University of Birmingham. In 1904, he began lecturing in Chemistry at Glasgow University. He married Elizabeth Paterson Johnstone in 1905. In 1919, he became the first Gardiner chair of Organic Chemistry.

Career In 1919, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Alexander Gray, George Alexander Gibson, John Glaister, Diarmid Noel Paton, Ralph Stockman, Thomas Hastie Bryce, Robert Muir, Frederick Orpen Bower and Robert Alexander Houston. He resigned from the Society in 1931.

Patterson spent his vacations mainly on the Firth of Clyde, for he was an expert yachtsman, and a member of the Clyde Corinthian Club. He retired in 1942 and died in Glasgow on 14 February 1949. Elizabeth died in Hillhead in 1953. They had no children.

Publications

An International Language for Chemistry (1924)