Norman Thomas Mortimer Wilsmore
Norman Thomas Mortimer Wilsmore (born January 23, 1868 in Williamstown (Victoria) , † June 12, 1940 in Claremont Town ) was an Australian chemist .
Wilsmore studied chemistry and physics from 1887 at the University of Melbourne with a bachelor's degree in 1890 and a master's degree in 1893. He then studied at University College London (from 1894) with William Ramsay and Norman Collie , at the University of Göttingen (1897 to 1901) with Walther Nernst and the ETH Zurich (1901) with Richard Lorenz . In 1903 he became Ramsay's assistant at University College London and received his doctorate in Melbourne in 1907 (D. Sc.). From 1912 he became a chemistry professor at the newly founded University of Western Australia in Perth , where he retired in 1937. He was in the senate of the university and vice chancellor in 1924/25. After retiring, he advised the local chemical company Plaimar Ltd.
He dealt with electrochemistry (electrode potentials of metals) until 1908 and with ketenes (of which he was a co-discoverer ) from 1907 to 1910 . He was one of the first to recognize that you can build rings with ketene and alkenes (ketene cycloaddition). In 1907 he invented the Wilsmore ketene lamp ( pyrolysis of acetone to ethenone ).
In 1894 he married Leonora Jessie Little, a fellow student who became the first woman to graduate in science from the University of Melbourne.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland. 1933/34 he was Vice President of the Australian National Research Council.
The Wilsmore Prize for Chemistry is awarded in his honor.
literature
- Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989, p. 457
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frances Chick, Norman Thomas Mortimer Wilsmore: Acetylketen: a polymeride of keten. In: Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions. Volume 93, 1908, pp. 946-950
- ↑ Wilsmore was also involved in the ethenone synthesis from the dehydration of acetic acid: Schmidlin-Bergman-Wilsmore reaction
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Wilsmore, Norman Thomas Mortimer |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian chemist |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 23, 1868 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Williamstown (Victoria) |
DATE OF DEATH | June 12, 1940 |
Place of death | Claremont Town |