Abstract
ON September 20 occurs the centenary of Sir James Dewar, one of GreatBritain's greatest experimentalists, occupying as he did for forty-six years the chair of chemistry at the Royal Institution and for thirty-six years guiding its destinies both by his position and his discoveries. Dewar added greatly to the lustre of the Institution, and by his many investigations, especially those on the liquefaction of gases and the attainment of high vacua, gained for himself a place among the leading chemists and physicists of his time. Born at Kincardine-on-Forth, he studied under Playfair at Edinburgh and Kekule at Ghent, and at the age of thirty-three was made Jacksonian professor of experimental philosophy at Cambridge. Two years later he was chosen to succeed Gladstone as Fullerian professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution and after another ten years was made superintendent. The year he went to Albemarle Street had seen the experiments of Cailletet in France and of Pictet in Geneva on the liquefaction of the so-called permanent gases.
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Centenary of Sir James Dewar. Nature 150, 342 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150342a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150342a0