Sir William Ramsay was a Nobel winning chemist who lived in the local area of High Wycombe. His original birthplace was Glasgow and he attended the University of Glasgow as well, but unfortunately did not finish his degree. In the coming year Ramsay became a doctoral student for the German organic chemist Rudolf Fittig at the University of Tubingen in Germany, where he received a doctorate in 1872.

Sir William Ramsay showed great resilience when not completing his degree. Ramsay’s excellence was shown when making his discoveries about the existence of neon, argon krypton and xenon. This discovery with the addition of helium and radon formed what today is known on the periodic table as the noble gasses. In Ramsay’s later years he moved to High Wycombe in which he performed research in a lab and went on in 1914 to do crucial work on the war’s science policy for the allied forces.