DOBBIE, SIR JAMES JOHNSTONE Brit ish chemist, was born at Glasgow on Aug. 4, 1852, and educated at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Leipzig. At Glasgow he became closely associated with Ramsay's work, and they collaborated in a series of papers on the cinchona alkaloids (Trans. Chem. Soc., 18 7 8 1879). He held various posts at University college, Bangor (1884), the Royal Scottish Museum (19°3-1909), and the Government Laboratory in London, becoming Government chemist (1911 192o) when the laboratory was created a separate department. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was knighted in 1915. He died on the Ayrshire coast on June 19, 1924.
At Bangor where he helped to establish an agricultural depart ment, Dobbie collaborated with Dr. A. Lauder, and they suc ceeded in isolating three of the five alkaloids of Corydalis cava. As Government chemist he used the absorption spectra method of studying the constitution of organic compounds (with W. N. Hartly, J. J. Fox and others). After the World War he applied the absorption spectra methods to gases. The results of his re searches were published in a series of papers from 1893-1921.