William Henry Aston Peake, son of John S. Peake, studied chemistry in Ireland before he moved to England in 1874. During that year he published a brief "Note on the action of light upon nitric acid" in Chemical News. For some time he was an assistant at the Royal Indian Civil Engineering College at Cooper's Hill, west of London, and may also have studied at the University of Edinburgh. He married a Miss Sexton in 1876 and they had three children. In 1878 he became an assistant at the Rothamstead agricultural experiments station, at Harpenden, north of London, where he remained until January 1882. During this period he and a Mr Warrington contributed a paper, "On the determination of carbon in soils", to the Chemical Society.
Peake had an extensive general knowledge of science and spoke several oriental languages, but was a modest person with an amiable disposition. In March 1882 he was appointed at the Stellenbosch College (later Victoria College, forerunner of Stellenbosch University) as the first professor of agricultural chemistry and experimental physics, with a view to introducing the teaching of agriculture at the college. Unfortunately his health had been precarious for some time and he died of pulmonary tuberculosis the next year. His successors, A.C.G. Fischer* and F. Blersch*, instituted agricultural courses which developed into a school of agriculture as part of Victoria College, and later into the Stellenbosch-Elsenburg College of Agriculture.
Peake was married to Mary Ann Emma Peake, with whom he had a son.
