Norman Thomas Mortimer Wilsmore

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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

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frances Chick, Norman Thomas Mortimer Wilsmore: Acetylketen: a polymeride of keten. In: Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions. Volume 93, 1908, pp. 946-950
  2. ↑ Wilsmore was also involved in the ethenone synthesis from the dehydration of acetic acid: Schmidlin-Bergman-Wilsmore reaction
personal data
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