Martin Lowry

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Martin Lowry

Thomas Martin Lowry , called Martin, (born October 26, 1874 in Low Moor, Bradford , West Yorkshire , England , † November 2, 1936 ) was an English chemist .

life and work

Lowry was the son of a clergyman and officer (EP Wood) and attended school in Bath (Kingswood School) and from 1893 the Central Technical College in South Kensington . In 1920 he received a scholarship from the City and Guilds of London Institute. He studied chemistry under Henry Edward Armstrong , who mainly dealt with organic chemistry , but also with the chemistry of ions in aqueous solutions. From 1896 to 1913 Lowry was his assistant and received his doctorate in 1899.

In 1898, Lowry discovered in nitro- d- camphor the change in the optical angle of rotation over time and introduced the term mutarotation to describe this phenomenon .

In 1906 Lowry became a lecturer in chemistry at Westminster Training College . In 1912 he went to Guy's Hospital Medical School , where in 1913 he became head of the chemical department and first professor of chemistry in a London medical school . In 1914 he was elected a member of the Royal Society . During the First World War he served the government in various functions in support of the war, including from 1917 to 1919 he was director for the filling of artillery ammunition and was on the chemical warfare and trench warfare committees. For this he received the CBE and the Italian Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus. In 1920 he became the first professor of physical chemistry at the University of Cambridge , which he remained until his death. The chair had recently been donated through grants from oil companies.

He studied the change in optical rotation caused by acid - or base- catalyzed reactions in camphor - derivatives , which led him to his definition of an acid-base theory in 1923 , which he developed independently of the same formulation by Johannes Nicolaus Brønsteds in the same year published (now known as Brønsted and Lowry's acid-base definition).

Lowry stayed in Cambridge until the end of his life. He was an active member of the Faraday Society and its president from 1928 to 1930.

In 1904 he married a daughter of clergyman C. Wood and had two sons and a daughter with her.

He had a D.Sc. from the University of London (1899), an honorary degree (MA) from Cambridge and honorary doctorates in Brussels and Dublin.

literature

  • WJ Pope: Thomas Martin Lowry. 1874-1936, Obituary Notices Royal Society, Vol. 2, 1938, pp. 287-293

Fonts

  • Optical Rotatory Power, London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1935
  • with AC Cavell: Intermediate Chemistry, London: Macmillan, 2nd edition 1939

Web links

Commons : Thomas Martin Lowry  - collection of images, videos and audio files


Individual evidence

  1. Life data, publications and academic family tree of Thomas Martin Lowry at academictree.org, accessed on January 1, 2019.