Information AboutWilliam Gregor |
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He was born in Trewarthenick , Cornwall , England, the son of Francis Gregor and Mary Copley. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School , where he became interested in Chemistry , then after two years with a private tutor entered St John's College, Cambridge from where he graduated in 1784 . After gaining an MA he moved to Diptford in Devon where his father had bought him the Living . He married Charlotte Anne Gwatkin in 1790 and they had one daughter. After a brief interval at Bratton Clovelly they moved permanently to the Rectory of Creed in Cornwall . Here, he began to a remarkably accurate chemical analysis of Cornish Mineral s. From a local mineral from the Manaccan Valley (a form of Ilmenite ), he isolated the Calx of an unknown metal which he named Manaccanite . In 1795 Martin Heinrich Klaproth discovered a new metal (titanium) in the mineral Rutile , then showed it to be the same as Gregor’s metal. Gregor later found titanium in Corundum from Tibet , and in a Tourmaline from a local tin mine. Never letting his scientific work interfere with his pastoral duties, he was also a distinguished landscape painter, etcher and musician. He died of Tuberculosis on 11 June 1817 and was buried in the local churchyard. Source: ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' |
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