Thomas Andrews was born in Belfast and was educated in Belfast, Dublin, Glasgow and Edinburgh, where he qualified as a doctor of medicine. He worked in Paris under Dumas, the distinguished chemist, became a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a member of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society. He established a medical practice in Belfast, and during the cholera epidemic he published valuable research on the blood of sufferers. Having taught in the Belfast Academical Institution for eleven years, he was subsequently appointed Vice-President and Professor of Chemistry of Queen's College, Belfast, where he established the School of Medicine. He published "The Church in Ireland", advocating its disestablishment, and was involved in social issues, writing a paper Suggestions for Checking the Hurtful Use of Alcoholic Beverages by the Working Classes. It was, however, as a chemist that he achieved international recognition, his research on ozone and gases being of particular significance. He became Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1876. He was a member of the Belfast Literary Society to which he was elected on 21 January 1850, serving as President, 1866-1867, and reading seven papers - not all on scientific subjects: one was entitled "Notices of the Castle of Heidelberg", another, "The Difficulties of France: their causes and remedy" (read in 1874). When he died, his students at Queen's presented his portrait to the university and funded the Andrews Studentship in Chemistry. The portrait, by Richard Hooke is on display in the Great Hall of Queen's University. In October 2013 the Royal Society of Chemistry erected a plaque to him as part of their "National Chemical Landmarks" project; the plaque is located in the Quadrangle of Queen's University, Belfast.

Born:	19 December 1813
Died:	26 November 1885