Harold Dixon

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Harold Baily Dixon (born August 11, 1852 in London , † September 19, 1930 in Lytham ) was a British chemist and football player .

Life

Dixon studied at Oxford and initially wanted to be a writer like his father, but then turned to chemistry in 1873 as a student of Augustus George Vernon Harcourt, under whom he received his doctorate in Oxford in 1875 . In the same year he became a lecturer at Trinity College (Oxford) and in 1887 he became a professor at Owens College in Manchester . In 1922 he retired.

Dixon founded a school for research into gas explosions. He proved that the law of mass action also applies here ( doubted by Robert Bunsen at the time ) and developed measuring methods for the explosion speed, which turned out to be greater than previously assumed: the detonation wave (a concept that he and Berthelot introduced) moved with it Speed ​​of sound through the gas. Robert Bunsen (1867) had previously measured significantly lower speeds (a few meters per second), but this only applied to the beginning of the reaction before the wave reached its maximum speed. In oxyhydrogen it measured 2,821 meters per second ( confirming earlier measurements by Marcelin Berthelot ).

His student David Leonard Chapman developed a first theory of detonation (Chapman-Jouguet theory) from Dixon's idea of ​​the detonation wave. In doing so, he continued Arthur Schuster's ideas of a steadily moving detonation wave , which he formulated in the appendix to Dixon's treatise. He developed a photographic method for observing detonation waves, which he later used (1903) for flame analysis. Later he dealt with the precise determination of the ignition temperatures of gases and gas mixtures, which showed that even relatively small admixtures can have a major effect.

His discovery in 1877 that mixtures of carbon monoxide and oxygen dried with phosphorus pentoxide can no longer be caused to explode with an electrical spark, led to investigations into the influence of moisture on chemical reactions.

As a member of the Oxford University AFC , Dixon played the final of the second FA Cup in 1873 , which Oxford lost 2-0 to Wanderers FC at the Lillie Bridge sports area in London .

literature

  • Dixon, Harold Baily, in: Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists, Harri Deutsch 1989, ISBN 978-3-817-11055-1 , p. 119

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Harold Baily Dixon at academictree.org, accessed on 30 January 2018th
  2. ↑ Peter Krehl, History of Shock Waves, Springer, p. 409
  3. ^ Dixon, The rate of explosion in gases, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., A 184, 1893, 97–152, 154–188 (Bakerian Lecture), comments by Schuster on this p. 152–154
  4. ^ Dixon with others: On the movement of the flame in the explosion of the gases, Phil.Trans. Roy. Soc., A 200, 1903, 315-352
personal data
SURNAME Dixon, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dixon, Harold Baily (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1930
Place of death Lytham