Prout was born in
Horton, Gloucestershire in 1785 and educated at 17 years of age by a clergyman, followed by the
Redland Academy at Bristol and
Edinburgh University, where he graduated in 1811 with an MD.[3] His professional life was spent as a practising physician in London, but he also occupied himself with chemical research. He was an active worker in biological chemistry and carried out many analyses of the secretions of living
organisms, which he believed were produced by the breakdown of bodily tissues. In 1823, he discovered that
stomach juices contain
hydrochloric acid, which can be separated from gastric juice by
distillation. In 1827, he proposed the classification of substances in food into sugars and starches, oily bodies, and albumen, which would later become known as
carbohydrates, fats, and
proteins.[4]
Prout is better remembered, however, for his researches into
physical chemistry. In 1815, based on the tables of
atomic weights available at the time, he anonymously hypothesized that the atomic weight of every element is an
integer multiple of that of
hydrogen, suggesting that the hydrogen
atom is the only truly fundamental particle (which he called
protyle[6]), and that the atoms of the other
elements are made of groupings of various numbers of hydrogen atoms. While
Prout's hypothesis was not borne out by later more-accurate measurements of atomic weights, it was a sufficiently fundamental insight into the structure of the atom that in 1920,
Ernest Rutherford chose the name of the newly discovered
proton to, among other reasons, give credit to Prout.
Prout contributed to the improvement of the
barometer, and the
Royal Society of London adopted his design as a national standard.
Prout wrote the eighth Bridgewater Treatise, Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, considered with reference to Natural Theology. It was in this work that he coined the term "convection" to describe a type of energy transfer.[8][9]
In 1814, Prout married Agnes Adam, daughter of
Alexander Adam, of Edinburgh, Scotland, and together they had six children.[10] Prout died in London in 1850 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
The "
Prout" is a unit of nuclear
binding energy, and is 1/12 the binding energy of the deuteron, or 185.5
keV. It is named after William Prout. "Proutons" was an early candidate for the name of what are now called
protons.
^Burr, A. C. (1934). "Notes on the History of the Experimental Determination of the Thermal Conductivity of Gases". Isis. 21: 169–186.
doi:
10.1086/346837.
S2CID145419589.