Francis W. Aston
| Francis William Aston | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
1 September 1877 Harborne, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | 20 November 1945 (aged 68) Cambridge, England, United Kingdom |
| Citizenship | British |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields | Chemistry, physics |
| Institutions | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Alma mater |
Mason College Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Doctoral advisor | Percy F. Frankland |
| Other academic advisors | J. J. Thomson |
| Known for |
Mass spectrograph Whole Number Rule |
| Notable awards | Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1922) Hughes Medal (1922) Royal Medal (1938) Duddell Medal and Prize (1944) |
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 Michael A. Grayson, Discovery of Isotopes of Elements (Part II: Francis William Aston), Profiles in Chemistry, Chemical Heritage Foundation
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Francis William Aston FRS (1 September 1877 – 20 November 1945) was an English chemist and physicist who won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole number rule. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Francis Aston was born in Harborne, now part of Birmingham, on 1 September 1877. He was the third child and second son of William Aston and Fanny Charlotte Hollis. He was educated at the Harborne Vicarage School and later Mason College in Worcestershire where he was a boarder. In 1893 Francis William Aston began his university studies at Mason College (which later became Mason University College and then the University of Birmingham) where he was taught physics by John Henry Poynting and chemistry by Frankland and Tilden. From 1896 on he conducted additional research on organic chemistry in a private laboratory at his father's house. In 1898 he started as a student of Frankland financed by a Forster Scholarship; his work concerned optical properties of tartaric acid compounds. He started to work on fermentation chemistry at the school of brewing in Birmingham and was employed by W. Butler & Co. Brewery in 1900. This period of employment ended in 1903 when he returned to the University of Birmingham under Poynting as an Associate.
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