Abstract
THE Manchester Guardian of July 27 contained an . appreciations of John Owens, the founder of Owens College Manchester, now the University of Manchester, who died on July 29, 1846, at the age of fifty-five.' Owens had been in business with his fataJMT as a furrier and a maker of hat linings, but had afterwards engaged in other business enterprises, and, being a bachelor of simple tastes and abstemious habits, had accumulated a considerable fortune which it is said he wished to leave to his closest friend, George Faulkner. But of the money Faulkner would have none ; he prevailed upon Owens to make a will leaving his fortune for educational purposes. An institution was to be set up at or near Manchester for the instruction of young persons in such branches of learning and science as “are now or may be hereafter taught in the English universities”, but subject to “the fundamental and immutable rule and condition” that the professors, officers, students, etc., shall not be required to submit to any religious test whatsoever. Owens' estate realized £168,025 10s. 5d., and the residue which came to the College was £96,654 4s. 6d. The College was opened in 1851 in William Cobden's old house, and new buildings were erected in 1870-73. Frankland was the first professor of chemistry, and in 1857 he was succeeded by Roscoe, under whom worked many men afterwards famous. The engineering department was opened in 1868 with Osborne Reynolds as professor of civil and mechanical engineering. “Owens,” says Mr. Redford, in the article referred to, "was a plain man with no aspirations to greatness, who builded better than he knew.
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Centenary of John Owens. Nature 158, 192–193 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158192e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158192e0