Argon and the non-inert pair: Rayleigh and Ramsay

Angewandte Chemie - International Edition

Volumn 43, Issue 47, 2004, Pages 6418-6424

  Thomas, John Meurig ^a,b  

^a DAVY FARADAY RESEARCH LABORATORY   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

History of science; Noble gases; Ramsay, William; Rayleigh, John William, Lord

Indexed keywords

ARGON; TECHNICAL PRESENTATIONS;

NOBEL PRIZES;

INERT GASES;

ARGON; INERT GAS;

ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD; ELECTRON MICROSCOPY; FORCE; LIGHT SCATTERING; OSCILLATION; REVIEW;

EID: 11144278232     PISSN: 14337851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/anie.200461824     Document Type: Review

References (27)

1. Sir George Gabriel Stokes (another senior wrangler), the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, whom Strutt greatly admired, did carry out some lecture-demonstrations, and he also ran his own laboratory, where, he discovered the phenomenon of fluorescence. The only experimental courses available in Cambridge in the mid-1860s were those in chemistry, mineralogy, and certain biological sciences, a narrowness of choice which Strutt greatly resented.
2. J. W. Strutt, Philos. Mag. 1869, 38, 1-15.
3. Sir James H. Jeans, Dictionary of National Biography, 1912-1921, p. 515.
4. J. W. Strutt, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London 1870, 161, 77-118.
5. H. von Helmholtz, Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, Berlin, 1863 (translated by A. J. Ellis under the title Sensations of Tone (1875).
6. H. von Helmholtz, Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, Berlin, 1863 (translated by A. J. Ellis under the title Sensations of Tone (1875).
7. [7] in physiological and psychological accoustics and music.
8. R. B. Lindsay, Lord Rayleigh: The Man and His Worth, Pergamon, 1970.
9. Evelyn Balfour was also the niece of another British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury.
10. The first volume appeared in 1877, the second in 1878. This treatise soon became, and remains, the standard and authoritative text dealing with all aspects of the production and propagation of sound and acoustic attenuation in all kinds of elastic media.
11. J. W. Strutt, Philos. Mag. 1872, 41, 107-120; J. W. Strutt, Philos. Mag. 1872, 41, 274-279.
12. J. W. Strutt, Philos. Mag. 1872, 41, 107-120; J. W. Strutt, Philos. Mag. 1872, 41, 274-279.
13. [12].
14. "The Scientific Research of John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh": J. N. Howard, Proc. R. Inst. GB 1988, 60, 73-86.
15. One should not be surprised by the fact, for there were other contemporary, great scientists (like William Crookes, inventor of the radiometer and discoverer of the element thallium, and later, like Rayleigh, President of the Royal Society) who were deeply interested in psychical phenomena. That was a widely held view. In fact when the journal Scientific American published an editorial in 1920, under the heading "The Future Based on an Analysis of the last 70 Years", it was predicted that whereas the eighteenth century was characterized scientifically by advances in electricity the twentieth century would be equally remembered for advances in psychic research.
16. The basic duties at the Royal Institution were light: the incumbent was to give each year a course of six Saturday afternoon lectures before Easter, as well as one Friday evening Discourse per annum, the lectures to be illustrated by experiments. In return he would have the year-round use of a laboratory of three rooms in the Royal Institution. The real attraction, it seemed, was that the Royal Institution was wired for electricity (thanks to the effort of the then Director, Sir James Dewar), which his laboratory at Terling was not.
17. J. J. Waterston (1811-1883) developed the early Kinetic Theory of Gasses and largely anticipated the theory put forward by R. J. E. Clausius in (1857).
18. Who is now remembered for his studies of the Pockels effect, used in electro-optical modulators.
19. Part of this account is based on the excellent Friday Evening Discourse given, at my invitation at the Royal Institution by J. N. Howard during my tenure of the Directorship. See ref. [12] for fuller details.
20. "Density of Nitrogen": Lord Rayleigh, Nature 1892, 46, 512-513.
21. W. M. Travers, A Life of Sir William Ramsay, Arnold, London, 1956; see also obituary notice in Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A 1956, 93, 1916-1917.
22. W. M. Travers, A Life of Sir William Ramsay, Arnold, London, 1956; see also obituary notice in Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A 1956, 93, 1916-1917.
23. I am greatly indebted to Professor Alwyn G. Davies FRS for making available to me his notes for a lunchtime lecture (on Ramsay) given at University College London, March 19, 2004.
24. Ramsay had spotted Soddy in 1898 as a bright young student at the University of Oxford where he was external examiner and Soddy had headed the honours list in chemistry.
25. Other members of Ramsay's team in London, included M. W. Travers, E. C. C. Baly, N. Collie, F. Soddy, R. Whytlaw-Gray, and E. Egerton, all of whom, like Donnan, became Fellow of the Royal Society.
26. H. S. Patterson, R. S. Cripps, R. Whytlaw-Gray, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A 1912, 86, 579-590.
27. Lord Rayleigh, Proc. R. Inst. GB 1895, 14, 524-538.