British chemist and physicist (1832-1919)
He discovered an element, built tubes that revealed cathode rays, and called what he saw inside them a fourth state of matter — decades before anyone else had the language for plasma.
William Crookes attended the Royal College of Chemistry and turned spectroscopy into a discovery engine: in 1861 he announced thallium, in 1865 he described the spectrum of terrestrial helium for the first time. He invented the Crookes tube in 1875 and, watching cathode rays flicker inside, proposed that "radiant matter" was a unique fourth state — a foundational step toward plasma physics, though he never quite named it that. He also built the Crookes radiometer without fully understanding the phenomenon it displayed. Late in his career, Royal Society investigations into cataracts among furna…
Sourced, dated quotes from William Crookes
The task I am called upon to perform today is to my thinking by no means a merely formal or easy matter.
I am not disposed to bewail the limitations imposed by human ignorance.
It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.
Ordinarily we communicate intelligence to each other by speech.
It may be objected that brain waves, like any other waves, must obey physical laws.
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