Life Story Of Sir William Ramsay

Sir William Ramsay was an eminent British physical chemist who is credited with the discovery of argon, krypton, neon and xenon. He also demonstrated that these gases, along with helium and radon, makes the noble gases; a family of new elements. Ramsay won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his extraordinary efforts.

Early Life and Education

Ramsay was born in Glasgow on 2 October 1852, the son of civil engineer William Ramsay and Catherine, née Robertson.He was a nephew of the geologist Sir Andrew Ramsay.
He attended the Glasgow Academy and then continued his education at the University of Glasgow under Thomas Anderson and then went to study in Germany at the University of Tübingen with Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig where his doctoral thesis was entitled Investigations in the Toluic and Nitrotoluic Acids.



Ramsay returned to Glasgow as Anderson's assistant at the Anderson College. He was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the University College of Bristol in 1879 and married Margaret Buchanan in 1881. In the same year he became the Principal of University College, Bristol, and somehow managed to combine that with active research both in organic chemistry and on gases.

Career

Blue Plaque at 12 Arundel Gardens commemorating the work of William Ramsay.
In 1887 he succeeded Alexander Williamson to the chair of Chemistry at University College London (UCL). It was here at UCL that his most celebrated discoveries were made. As early as 1885–1890 he published several notable papers on the oxides of nitrogen, developing the skills that he would need for his subsequent work.

On the evening of 19 April 1894 Ramsay attended a lecture given by Lord Rayleigh. Rayleigh had noticed a discrepancy between the density of nitrogen made by chemical synthesis and nitrogen isolated from the air by removal of the other known components.

 After a short discussion he and Ramsay decided to follow this up. By August, Ramsay could write to Rayleigh to announce that he had isolated a heavy component of air, previously unknown, which did not appear to have any obvious chemical reactivity. He named the gas "argon". In the years that followed, working with Morris Travers, he discovered neon, krypton, and xenon. He also isolated helium which had been observed in the spectrum of the sun but had not been found on earth. In 1910 he also made and characterized radon.

In 1904 Ramsay received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Ramsay's high standing in scientific circles led to him being an adviser in the setting up of the Indian Institute of Science. He suggested Bangalore as the most appropriate location for the institute.

Ramsay’s high standing in scientific circles led to his unfortunate endorsement in 1905 of the Industrial and Engineering Trust Ltd., a corporation with a supposed secret process to extract gold from seawater. The corporation bought property along the English coast to implement the gold-from-seawater process, but the company quickly faded from public view, and never produced any gold.

Contributions and Achievements

After taking over the chair of Chemistry at University College London, William Ramsay made several important discoveries and wrote many scientific papers regarding the oxides of nitrogen. Drawing inspiration from Lord Rayleigh’s 1892 discovery that the atomic weight of nitrogen found in the atmosphere was higher than that of nitrogen found in the atmosphere, Ramsay discovered a heavy gas in atmospheric nitrogen, and named it argon. One year later, he liberated helium from a mineral called cleveite.

While working with chemist Morris W. Travers in 1898, Ramsay isolated three more elements from liquid air at low temperature and high pressure, and termed them as neon, krypton, and xenon. In collaboration with another chemist, Frederick Soddy, in 1903, Ramsay showed that helium, together with a gaseous emanation called radon, is consistenly generated during the radioactive decay of radium. This discovery had a profound influence on the field of radiochemistry.

Later Life and Death

William Ramsay was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1888, and was knighted three years later, in 1902. He also worked as a president of the Chemical Society, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ramsay died of nasal cancer on July 23, 1916 in Buckinghamshire, England. He was 63 years old.