10th December 2004, 18:50
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Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Glasgow
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From the "Herald" newspaper website today 10/12/04
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/29542-print.shtml
Quote:
Our forgotten science hero
BETH PEARSON December 10 2004
IF you ever find yourself on Queen's Crescent, off West Princes Street in Glasgow, it's worth stopping by No 2 to pay your respects. There's no plaque on the wall to indicate it, but it's here that Sir William Ramsay was born. Were it not for him, the periodic table would be considerably smaller and Scotland would not have gained its first Nobel Prize for chemistry until some 50 years after Ramsay did in 1904. Indeed, today is the centenary of Ramsay receiving that Nobel Prize – not that you'd know it.
Professor Leslie Barr is emeritus professor of physics at the University of Paisley and last night gave an address to the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow to mark the centenary. "I don't think people know it's the centenary of Ramsay's Nobel Prize," says Barr, speaking from his home in Lochwinnoch.
"If you went to America, you'll find universities pride themselves on anyone in the university who has a Nobel Prize. We underestimate what we have done. We ought to make a song and dance about Ramsay."
Given Ramsay's contribution to not only science but also life as we know it, his relative obscurity is even more difficult to make sense of. He discovered argon, terrestrial helium (hitherto thought only found on the sun), neon, krypton and xenon, which are used, respectively, in the welding industry, deep sea diving, neon lights and lasers.
"What Ramsay did was put a whole new column in the periodic table," says Barr. "These gases are immensely useful and there's a huge industry based on extracting them. No other chemist has discovered so many elements. Ramsay discovering the inert gases made an enormous impression because nobody had suspected that these gases existed."
Ramsay studied chemistry and physics at Glasgow University, though he didn't graduate as they formed part of a medical degree, which he had no interest in doing. Instead, he went to Germany where science degrees were well-established. He attended the University of Tubingen and received his PhD for a thesis on orthotoluic acid and its derivatives.
Returning to Scotland, he sought to introduce the academic organisation he had experienced in Germany. "He was one of the first people in this country to build up a research school, which is very much the way things are done now," says Barr. He stayed only one year in Glasgow, however, before moving to England, where he lived for the remainder of his working life. Working with Lord Rayleigh, he announced the discovery of argon in August 1894, helium the following year and neon, krypton and xenon the year after that.
It wasn't long before a Nobel Prize beckoned, but a further mark of recognition may be awarded posthumously. Barr is in discussions with the current owners of No 2 Queen's Crescent to have a plaque fixed on the exterior wall, a la Charles Rennie Mackintosh. "Ramsay was as great a man and a contemporary of Mackintosh, but do we hear about him?" he asks.
"No."
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