Herbert McLeod

Herbert McLeod (1841–1923) was an English chemist known for inventing the McLeod gauge and a sunshine recorder. His birth and death dates vary across sources: born either on 9 or 19 February 1841 in Stoke Newington or Stamford Hill, North London, and died on 1 or 3 October 1923, possibly in Richmond, Surrey. Educated at Stockwell Grammar School, he studied chemistry under George Frederick Ansell from 1855 and joined the Royal College of Chemistry in 1856. He worked as an assistant to August Wilhelm von Hofmann until 1860, then under Edward Frankland until 1871.

McLeod became a professor at the Royal Indian Engineering College, retiring in 1901. In 1874, he introduced the McLeod gauge, a significant innovation in vacuum measurement. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1881, he managed the proof-reading of their Catalogue of Scientific Papers from 1888 until 1915 when health issues forced him to stop.

He married Amelia Woodley, with whom he had three sons and two daughters. McLeod was a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Chemical Society, active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and sought to reconcile science with his Christian faith.