biography
pronunciation:
[krabtree, ?krabtray
| biography:
| Poet and polymath, born in Bristol, SW England, UK. According to the records of the Crabtree Foundation, he was a precocious child, who travelled as flute boy in Cook's first voyage (1768). He spent some time at Oxford University (1773) before joining his family wine firm (1783) and travelling in Europe, where he met and developed a great friendship with Wordsworth, inspiring several of his poems. Crabtree went on to become a latter-day Renaissance man, making contributions to science, engineering, and mathematics, as well as achieving recognition as a traveller, translator, and lawyer. He is thought to have met virtually all the leading figures of his time, often suggesting ideas and inventions later attributed to them, and is himself considered to have been the first inventor of several products and devices, such as soda water and the beer pump. Little was known of him until the 20th-c, partly due to his own wish that no biographical account should be published after his death. Nonetheless, the Crabtree Foundation was founded in 1954 at University College London, dedicated to research into and exposition of his life and work, and continues to organize annual orations in his memory. |
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