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aston biography
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Francis
William Aston was born in September 1877
in Birmingham, England, the third of seven
children. He was educated at Harborne
Vicarage School and Malvern College where
his interest in science began. In 1894 he
entered Mason College, Birmingham (now
The University of
Birmingham) where he studied chemistry
and physics. He won a Forster Scholarship
in 1898 and worked on the optical
properties of tartaric acid derivatives,
the results of which were published in
1901.
He spent three years as a chemist in the
laboratory of a local brewery and became
interested in the design and construction
of new types of pumps for evacuating
vessels. From this stemmed his interest in
gas discharge phenomena in evacuated
tubes. In 1903 he obtained a scholarship
from The University of
Birmingham to work on the properties of
the vacuums in discharge tubes. By the end
of 1909 he accepted an invitation from
Sir
J.J.Thomson to work at the
Cavendish Laboratory,
Cambridge, on studies of positive
rays. It was during this period that he
obtained definitive evidence for the
existence of two isotopes of the inert gas
neon. This research was interrupted by
World War I during which Aston worked at
the Royal Aircraft Establishment in
Farnborough. Here he studied the effect of
atmospheric conditions on aeroplane
fabrics and coatings.
Returning to the Cavendish Laboratory in
1919, he again worked on separating the
isotopes of neon. This led to his
invention of the mass
spectrograph, an apparatus which uses
electromagnetic fields to separate
isotopes. Extending this principle to
other chemical elements, Aston discovered
212 of the naturally occurring isotopes.
From these results, he was able to
formulate the Whole Number Rule which
states that where the mass of the oxygen
isotope is defined, all other isotopes
have masses that are very nearly whole
numbers.
Aston continued to make measurements,
using an improved instrument now on
display at the National Science
Museum
in London. He published results of his
work in the Proceedings of the
Royal
Society
and authored the books Isotopes (1922;
revised edition 1941) and of Structural
Units of the Material Universe (1923).
Aston was elected Fellow of Trinity
College in 1920 and received the Mackenzie
Davidson Medal of the Röntgen Society
the same year. In 1921 he was made a
Fellow of the Royal
Society
and was awarded the the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry the following year. He
became an honorary member of the Russian
Academy of Sciences and the Accademia dei
Lincei, and held honorary doctorates of
the Universities of Birmingham and
Dublin.
Aston remained a bachelor throughout his
life. He was an enthusiastic sportsman who
enjoyed skiing, rockclimbing, tennis and
swimming . He was also keen musician,
playing the piano, violin and cello. He
died in Cambridge on November 20, 1945 at
the age of 68.
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