Andrew Ure was born in Glasgow, the son of Alexander Ure, a cheesemonger and his wife, Anne. He received an M.D. from Glasgow University in 1801, and served briefly as an army surgeon before settling in Glasgow, where he became a member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in 1803. He replaced Dr. George Birkbeck as Professor of Natural Philosophy (specializing in chemistry and physics) at the recently formed Andersonian Institution in 1804. His evening lectures on chemistry and mechanics enjoyed considerable success and inspired the foundation of a number of mechanical institutions in Britain and the École des Arts et Métiers in Paris. He married Catherine Monteath in 1807.

Ure founded the Garnet Hill observatory in 1808. He was put in charge and resided in it for several years, leaving it second only to Greenwich in reputation at that time. Whilst in residence he was visited by Sir William Herschel, the Astronomer Royal, who gave some lectures to the local Astronomical Society and helped him to install a fourteen-foot reflecting telescope of his own [Ure's] design and manufacture. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1811. Herschel's second son, many years later (in 1866), came to occupy Dr. Ure's Chair in Natural Philosophy

In 1814, while giving guest lectures in Belfast, he did consulting work for the Irish linen board, devising an 'alkalimeter' which gave volumetric estimates of the alkali contents of industrial substances. This in turn led him to the concept of normality in volumetric analysis. He achieved considerable reputation for his practical chemistry.

In 1818 Ure revealed experiments he had been carrying out on a murderer/thief named Matthew Clydesdale, after the man's execution by hanging. He claimed that, by stimulating the phrenic nerve, life could be restored in cases of suffocation, drowning or hanging. This supposedly influenced Mary Shelley when writing her novel, 'Frankenstein'.

Every muscle of the body was immediately agitated with convulsive movements resembling a violent shuddering from cold. ... On moving the second rod from hip to heel, the knee being previous]y bent, the leg was thrown out with such violence as nearly to overturn one of the assistants, who in vain tried to prevent its extension. The body was also made to perform the movements of breathing by stimulating the phrenic nerve and the diaphragm.

When the supraorbital nerve was excited 'every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer's face, surpassing far the wildest representations of Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.'

In 1819 he divorced his wife, who had become the mistress of an Anderson's Institution colleague. In 1821 he published his first major book, Dictionary of Chemistry, a replacement for William Nicholson's outdated Dictionary. In 1822 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

By 1830, Ure's outside interests led him to resign first from his chair and then from the Institution. He moved to London and set himself up as a consulting chemist (probably the first such in Britain). His work included acting as an expert witness, government commissions and industrial tours of England, Belgium and France. His visits to English textile mills led to his publication of The Philosophy of Manufactures (1835) and Account of the Cotton Industry (1836), dealing with the textile industry. In 1840 he helped found the Pharmaceutical Society.

The great Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines, Ure's chief and most encyclopedic work, was published in 1837 for which he received 1,000 guineas. Further enlarged editions were rapidly called for in 1840, 1843 and 1853. After his death four further editions appeared, the last in 1878. This work was translated into almost every European language, including Russian and Spanish. The Times review said: "This is a book of vast research, and the variety of subjects embraced in it may be estimated by the fact that on the French translation it was thought advisable to employ nineteen collaborators, all regarded as experts in their special subjects."

Ure died in 1857 in London. Michael Faraday's posthumous description of him was:

Ure was a scriptural geologist and in 1829 published A New System of Geology, for which "he received 500 guineas and was elected an original member of the Geological Society." Some criticized it severely. Ure did not write his book on the basis of personal geological investigations. Rather, he drew "freely from every authentic source of geological knowledge within his reach." Specifically, Conybeare and Phillips' Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, though he also "diligently availed himself" of the valuable information in Cuvier's Ossemens Fossiles. "The New System of Geology was not a success, even among readers who might have been expected to be sympathetic, and it was soon forgotten." because "the New System of Geology ... came just too late, at a time when the positions it so noisily defended were being quietly abandoned, leaving the author in slightly ridiculous isolation."

Attitude toward geology

Ure wrote his book for the expressed purpose of promoting the study of geology, that "magnificent field of knowledge." He was respectful in his comments about geologists. Lyell's charge that Ure wanted all the old-earth geologists "to be burnt at Smithfield" finds no basis in this book. His surviving correspondence illustrate good relations with many prominent scientists for most of his life and that he had a wide circle of friends, many of them leading scientists in the UK and abroad, who lamented his death.

Nevertheless, Ure considered both Werner and Hutton’s theories of earth history to be inconsistent with every principle of mechanical and chemical science. He felt that one needed to follow the example of Bacon and Newton to build a sound geological theory. “Our age and nation never cease to extol Bacon's inductive logic, and the rigid demonstrations of Newton. One is naturally led to suppose, that those who so loudly profess to be their disciples should imitate, in some degree at least, the methods of research prescribed and practised by these great masters of reason and science. We should expect to find the facts subservient to any doctrine, collected with labour and skill, examined with scrupulous caution, and lucidly arranged without deceptive art. It is only facts, thus carefully chosen and candidly compared, which can be generalized into a just theory. If we examine the ablest expositions of the Wernerian and Huttonian geologies by that philosophic standard, we shall find them to fall egregiously short.”

Relation between scripture and geology

Ure believed that when both the geological phenomena and the Scriptures were rightly interpreted they would agree, since both were the work of God. Like most of his old-earth contemporaries, Ure also believed that the ultimate fruit of scientific and philosophical study was to draw man's attention to the Creator. In seeking to follow Bacon, he insisted that geology, like any science, must be based on experimentation, careful observation and sound inductive logic. But the Bible was not given to man as a scientific textbook.

“Revelation was certainly not imparted to mankind, for the purpose of instructing them in any principles of philosophy, which reason can explore. When the phenomena of nature are described [in Scripture], it is always in popular language, corresponding to the information of sense.”

Ure said that the Bible does not teach us "the actual motion or repose of" the heavenly bodies; that is something for astronomers to investigate. Likewise, it does not describe the ratios of land and sea before and after the Flood; that should be considered on the basis of sound principles of meteorology, physics, geology, etc. But the Bible was relevant to the question of the history of the earth. He made a sharp distinction between the present operation of the universe (and all it contains) and its past origin. In his mind, the proper domain of science is in the repeatable and experimental study of the way in which things in creation function in the observable present. But when we turn to the unobservable past we are entering into a great deal of speculation.