Sue Young Histories

Lucy Everest Boole 1862 - 1905

June 06, 2008

Lucy Everest Boole 1862 - 1905 daughter of Mary Everest Boole and George Boole, granddaughter of Thomas Roupell Everest.

From [http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/life-society/science-technology/irish-scientists/lucy-everest-boole-(1862-/\](http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/life-society/science-technology/irish-scientists/lucy-everest-boole-(1862-/) ‘… Lucy Everest Boole a chemist, was the fourth daughter of the mathematician George Boole and was born in Blackrock, in Cork. She was a chemist and was the second woman to pass the London School of Pharmacy’s major examination in 1888 and was the first woman to formally do research in pharmaceutical chemistry.

She was assistant to the chemist Wyndham Rowland Dunstan (1861-1924), Professor of Chemistry to the Pharmaceutical Society. Her method of analysis of tartar emetic was the official method of assay until 1963.

Lucy Boole lectured at the London School of Medicine for Women, and was the first woman Professor of Chemistry at The Royal Free Hospital in London. She was a Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry. Lucy Boole never married and lived with her mother Mary Everest Boole until her death in 1904.

Lucy’s promising career was cut short by her premature death at the age of forty-three.

Lucy Boole assisted her nephew Geoffrey Ingram Taylor in his work, and she collaborated with Wyndham Rowland Dunstan. Geoffrey Ingram Taylor reported how much influence his home life had, meaning ’much more to me than anything I did at school’, and that Lucy and her four sisters Mary, Margaret, Alicia and Ethel were often in attendance, as was their mother Mary Everest Boole (George Boole had died when the children were quite young), who ’all contributed to the family influences‘.

Lucy and her sisters were all home educated by Mary Everest Boole in mathematics and geometry, logic and thinking for themselves.

Lucy was also taught by Sergyei “Stepniak” Kravchinsky:

Lucy studied with her (Ethel) and both women regarded Stepniak as their guardian…

Lucy wrote An Enquiry Into the Nature of the Vesicating Constituent of Croton Oil with Wyndham Rowland Dunstan.


DISCLAIMER:

Any views or advice in this site should not be taken as a substitute for medical advice or treatment, especially if you know you have a specific health complaint