Sir William Ramsay was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1852. He completed a doctorate in chemistry at Tubingen, focusing on organic chemistry, in 1872. Following this degree, he became assistant in chemistry at the Anderson College in Glasgow and two years later secured a similar position at the University there. In 1880, he was appointed Principal and Professor of Chemistry at University College, Bristol, and moved on in 1887 to the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at University College, London, a post which he held until his retirement in 1913.
Ramsay is best known for work that established a whole new group in the periodic table: the noble gases. He and the physicist Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt) carried out separate investigations, for which they received Nobel Prizes in 1904, Ramsay in chemistry and Lord Rayleigh in physics.
Information as of 1913