Andrew Fyfe (chemist)

Andrew Fyfe (1792 to 1861) was a Scottish surgeon and chemist who divided his career between the medical and chemical teaching of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Born in Edinburgh in January 1792, he took his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh in 1814 and became a Fellow of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons in 1818. For many years he lectured privately in the city on chemistry and pharmacy, having begun as assistant to Thomas Charles Hope, who also proposed him for the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1823. He failed to win the chair of materia medica at Edinburgh in 1832 and the chair of chemistry there in 1844, but then obtained the chemistry professorship at the University of Aberdeen that William Gregory had vacated, and he kept it until his death. He was president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts in 1840 and 1841 and of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1842 and 1843. His knowledge of inflammable substances was well regarded, and he gave evidence at official inquiries on the subject. In 1839 he was among the first to work out the theory behind positive rather than negative photographic prints, though he did not pursue it beyond experiments with ferns laid on chemical papers. His writings include Elements of Chemistry (1827) and reports on kelp and barilla. He died at home in Edinburgh on 31 December 1861.