Trinity College Dublin appointed its first lecturer in chemistry in 1711 so that its chemistry department can claim to be amongst the oldest in the world. The lectureship was elevated to a full professorship in 1785 and this book traces the development of
chemistry in Trinity from its beginnings in the eighteenth century to what it is today. In those early years, chemistry was taught in universities as an adjunct to medicine and was often called “the hand-maid of medicine”, so that our first chemistry lecture was not a chemist at all. Rather he was a distinguished doctor, and until the end of the eighteenth century chemistry in Trinity was still dominated by medicine. However, with the appointment in 1850 of James Apjohn to the Professorship, chemistry in Trinity became an important subject in its own right and by the end of that century could hold its own with the best in Europe.