David Leonard Chapman

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David Leonard Chapman (born December 6, 1869 in Wells (Norfolk) , † January 17, 1958 in Oxford ) was a British physico-chemist.

Chapman attended Manchester Grammar School and studied on a scholarship at Christ Church College of Oxford University with degrees in Chemistry (1893) and Physics (1894). He was then a Science Master at the Gigglewick School in Settle (North Yorkshire ). During this time he came in contact with the chemistry professor Harold Baily Dixon (1852-1930) from Owens College, Manchester University , who brought him to the university in 1897. Dixon experimentally investigated detonations and explosion speeds, for which Chapman provided a theoretical basis in 1899. In 1907 he became a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. There he was laboratory manager and retired in 1944. He died of cancer.

He is known for work on shock waves and an early theory of detonation, the Chapman-Jouguet theory , named after him and French engineer Émile Jouguet .

He later investigated the kinetics of chemical reactions partly in collaboration with Charles Hutchens Burgess and his wife Muriel Holmes, who was also a chemist and studied with him. The investigations had an influence on the theory of chemical chain reactions by Max Bodenstein and Walther Nernst in Germany. He dealt with the photochemical reactions of gases under UV radiation, the dissociation of water vapor through electrical discharges, the chlorine- oxyhydrogen reaction, the role of metals in catalysis in gases and problems with the decomposition of ozone .

The Gouy-Chapman double layer , which forms ions on charged surfaces, is named after him and Louis Georges Gouy .

In 1913 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society .

literature

  • Peter Krehl: History of shock waves, explosions and impact. Springer, 2009 (with biography).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Leonard Chapman: The rate of explosion in gases, In: Philosophical Magazine. Volume 47, 1899, pp. 90-104.
  2. ^ Émile Jouguet: Sur la propagation des réactions chimiques dans les gaz. In: Journal des Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, Series 6, Volume 1, 1905, pp. 347-425 and Volume 2, 1906, pp. 5-85.
personal data
SURNAME Chapman, David Leonard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physico-chemist
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Wells (Norfolk)
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1958
Place of death Oxford