While chemists from the British Isles had made numerous and major contributions to the development of chemical science, few English chemists had embraced the rapidly evolving field of organic chemistry.  That changed, however, in the mid-nineteenth century when many English and Scottish chemists began journeying to the laboratories of notable German and French leaders in the emerging field.  Foremost among these was Alexander Williamson (1824-1904).   In the 1850s, he made a number of dramatic advances in the science by exploiting the predictive power of new structural theories developed by the likes of Gerhardt and Laurent.  Despite the fact that he had the use of but a single arm, Williamson pioneered the rational synthesis of a number of compounds.  Most notably, he established that ethers could be synthesized from the reaction of alcohols and alkyl halides.  Students today still learn of the Williamson Ether Synthesis in their organic chemistry classes.  In a broader sense, he was among the most successful chemists of the age in terms of applying his imagination to the challenge of understanding chemical processes and molecular structure in a visual manner.