Chemistry beyond the academy: diversity in Scotland in the early nineteenth century

Outside formal university chemistry classes in Scotland, which existed mainly to fulfil the requirements of medical courses, chemistry teaching was available from extramural lecturers. This form of teaching was often aimed at medical students, who could fulfil their graduation requirements if the lecturer had approved status. However, most of those attending would not have been seeking any formal qualification: there was a wave of enthusiasm among people from many walks of life about gaining chemical knowledge. Audiences included fashionable gentlefolk, manufacturers and industrialists, apprentice surgeons, mechanics, and artisans. Much of the teaching was at a highly proficient level, chemists of the stature of Thomas Thomson, Andrew Ure, Andrew Fyfe, Edward Turner, William Gregory, Thomas Graham, David Boswell Reid and George Wilson all offering classes. For several such teachers, it was the first step in a career that would later lead to significant academic or governmental appointments. In an Appendix, the article lists forty-eight chemists who have been identified as having taught extramurally between the later eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.