James Ballantyne Hannay

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James Ballantyne Hannay , also Bannantyne, (born January 1, 1855 in Helensburgh near Glasgow , † March 17, 1931 ) was a Scottish chemist. Today he is best known for his 1880 claim to have produced artificial diamonds .

Life

Hannay's father was a theater owner (Prince of Wales Theater, later Grand Theater in Cowcaddens) and Hannay came into contact with pyrotechnics in the theater. He was self-taught and in 1873 became a chemist in a chromate factory in Glasgow. In 1876/77 he was an assistant at Anderson College (later the University of Strathclyde ) and then at Owens College in Manchester . Soon after, he opened a private chemistry laboratory in Glasgow (Sword Street) and worked as a consulting chemist for industry. He also had aniline dyes produced in Hamburg.

He held numerous patents in chemistry. Among other things, he dealt with the determination of endpoints in dimensional analysis, electrochemistry and mineral analysis. He developed a process for the production of white lead and investigated the behavior of substances at the critical point and already recognized that there is not one phase dissolved in the other, but that both go into a new phase.

Around 1880 he tried to produce diamonds synthetically from hydrocarbons with lithium at high pressure (he heated a mixture of paraffin, bone oil and lithium in closed iron tubes until it burned red). However, the pressures were far beyond what later successful work on diamond synthesis required ( Tracy Hall et al. In the 1950s). He himself was convinced that he had made diamonds and initially received confirmation from the British Museum. Some of the alleged synthetic diamonds were later examined by Robert Robertson (1869–1949), among others , and were found to be natural diamonds. In his experiments he observed the diffusion of gases through metals at extreme pressure.

He later turned to the origins of religion and published on the Hebrew Bible.

In 1876 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 15, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Hannay, James Ballantyne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hannay, James Bannantyne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish chemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Helensburgh
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 1931