Alan Walsh (physicist)
Sir Alan Walsh (born December 19, 1916 in Hoddleston , Lancashire , † August 3, 1998 in Melbourne ) was a British-Australian physicist and chemist. He is the inventor of atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) in analytical chemistry.
Walsh attended school in Darwen and studied physics at Manchester University with a bachelor's degree in 1937 and then conducted research at Manchester College of Technology. He then went into industry, was with the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association as an industrial physicist from 1939 to 1946, most recently as head of spectroscopy in 1945/46. During the Second World War he was at the Metal and Produce Recovery Depot of the Ministry of Aircraft Production in Durham and at the same time made his master's degree (MSc Tech) at the University of Manchester in 1944. He moved to Melbourne in 1946 , where he worked in the recently established Chemical Physics Department of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). He headed the Spectroscopy Department there from 1946 to 1957 and was then Assistant Chief of the Chemical Physics Department. He stayed there until his retirement in 1977. There he developed AAS in the 1950s. The first spectrometer based on the principle was produced by Techtron in Australia in the mid-1960s. The method revolutionized analytical chemistry and made it possible to determine the concentration of numerous elements quickly, inexpensively and with high accuracy, without the use of wet chemistry .
In 1976 he received the Royal Medal and in 1982 the Robert Boyle Medal . In 1958 he became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and in 1982 of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. In 1967/68 he was President of the Australian Institute of Physics, which awards the Alan Walsh Medal for industrial physicists in his honor. In 1969 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1976 he received the Torbern Bergman Medal from the Swedish Chemical Society . In 1977 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lista mottagare. Svenska Kemisamfundet, accessed on September 7, 2019 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Alan Walsh (physicist) in the bibliographic database WorldCat
- Entry in the Encyclopedia of Australian Science
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Walsh, Alan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British-Australian physicist and chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 19, 1916 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hoddleston , Lancashire |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 3, 1998 |
| Place of death | Melbourne |