Sir joseph wilson swan biography definition

​SWAN, SirJOSEPH WILSON (1828–1914), chemist and electrical inventor, the second son of John Swan, by his wife, Isabella Cameron, was born at Sunderland 31 October 1828, and educated at Hendon Lodge and Hylton Castle, near Sunderland, under the Rev.

John Wood, who interested him in science and encouraged him to study such scientific books as were then available.

Sir joseph wilson swan biography definition

At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a firm of chemists and druggists at Sunderland, where he obtained considerable experience in operative and experimental chemistry. Before the end of his apprenticeship he joined the business of John Mawson, a chemist of Newcastle, and, encouraged by Mawson's kindly interest, he continued his experimental researches, and later became a partner in the business.

Swan was interested in photography, and, on the invention of the collodion process by Frederick Scott Archer [q.v.] in 1851, turned his atte