William Ramsay Biography

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World of Scientific Discovery on William Ramsay

Besides winning the 1904 Nobel Prize for discovering a whole family of gases, William Ramsay did well at just about anything he tried--sports, languages, math, music. He even learned glassblowing so that he could make the vessels he needed for his lab experiments.

Ramsay, the only child of a civil engineer, was supposed to become a minister, but his interest in science led him to enter the field of organic chemistry, earning a Ph.D. in 1872. Over the next fifteen years, while teaching at universities in Scotland and England, Ramsay synthesized various organic chemicals and studied the critical properties of liquids and gases. After moving to London's University College in 1887, Ramsay became intrigued with a puzzle posed by another British chemist, John William Strutt ( Lord Rayleigh), who had found that nitrogen extracted from the air was a little heavier than nitrogen obtained from chemical compounds.

Ramsay pointed out that this discrepancy had been noticed, but not explained, a hundred years earlier when Henry Cavendish tried repeatedly to combine oxygen with nitrogen, but he always had a small bubble of gas left over. As it turned out, this bubble would contain five new gaseous elements.

Rayleigh and Ramsay spent the summer of 1894 trying to solve this mystery. Although they worked in different laboratories, they exchanged information almost every day. By August, Ramsay had isolated a nonreactive gas that was heavier than nitrogen. The gas was analyzed by Sir William Crookes using an instrument that hadn't yet been invented in Cavendish's day--the spectroscope, which splits the light given off by an element into its different colors, revealing a characteristic set of spectral lines. This spectroscopic analysis revealed that the mystery gas's spectrum was unique which meant it was a new element. Ramsay and Rayleigh named the gas argon, after the Greek word for lazy (argos), because it would not react with other elements to form compounds.

The new gas fit in well with current theories of chemistry as reflected in Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements. But argon's position on the table implied that it belonged to a family of gases--other elements with a similar nature must exist. So Ramsay set out to find argon's relatives.

He soon learned of a gas that had been obtained in America, which he then produced in his lab from a uranium mineral, cleveite. Again, spectroscopic testing by Crookes revealed unique spectral lines but, more astonishing to Ramsay, these lines were identical to those observed in 1868 by British astronomer Joseph Lockyer (1836-1920) and French astronomer Pierre Janssen (1824-1907) in the spectrum of the Sun. This solar gas had been named helium (from the Greek sun ), and Ramsay announced the discovery of helium on Earth in 1895. Soon Ramsay was joined by Morris Travers (1872-1961), a young British chemist. Together they confirmed that helium was also inert and discovered that it is produced from thorium minerals as well as uranium ones.

In 1898, Ramsay and Travers isolated certain fractions of argon gas that turned out to contain three new gases: krypton ("hidden"), neon ("new"), and xenon ( "strange"). Each gas was indicated by characteristic lines over the rainbow of colors, from yellow-green to crimson to violet-blue. Ramsay and Travers went on to determine the properties of these new gases by liquefying and solidifying them. Ramsay knew that, theoretically, one more inert gas should exist. Since he had found that helium was related somehow to radioactive uranium ores, Ramsay became interested in radioactivity in late 1902 and enlisted help from Frederick Soddy, a British chemist with experience in radioactivity. Together, they proved that helium was formed continuously during the process of uranium decay.

Finally the last inert gas, radon, was conclusively identified. For many years, it had been called radium emanation and had first been linked to radium by Friedrich Dorn (1848-1916) in 1900. Working with several different scientists, Ramsay was able to map its spectrum, determine its density and atomic weight, and confirm the theory that the decay of radium into radon also produces helium.

One of Ramsay's strengths as a researcher was his persistence in pursuing his ideas single-mindedly, even in the face of negative results. At the same time, Ramsay benefitted from a long line of collaborators who were able to stimulate his interest in more fruitful areas. Ramsay was also known for openly acknowledging his mistakes, and he never stopped improving his work by learning new techniques and using new equipment. His personable nature and enthusiasm made him well-liked by nearly everyone who knew him. In addition to winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1904 for his research on the inert gases, Ramsay received many other honors and medals, including a knighthood in 1902 (his motto was "Be kind"). After his retirement, Ramsay continued to conduct scientific research in his home. When he died at the height of World War I, he was mourned by scientists worldwide.