Stephen Mason

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Stephen Finney Mason (born July 6, 1923 in Leicester , England , † December 11, 2007 ) was a British chemist and historian of science .

Live and act

Mason was born in Leicester and grew up in the village of Anstey. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to attend the Wyggeston Grammar School. Then he was able to study science at Wadham College, Oxford University again thanks to a scholarship .

He completed his studies in 1945 with a BA. In 1947 he received his doctorate from Dalziel Ll. Hammick on "physico-chemical factors that underlie the biological properties of some antimalarial agents". After the publication of an essay on the history of proto-chemical thought, Mason received an offer in 1947 to research at the Museum for the History of Science in Oxford, where he subsequently worked until 1953.

In 1956 he began teaching physical organic chemistry at the University of Exeter . In 1964 he moved to the University of East Anglia in 1964, where he took over a newly created chair in chemistry. In 1970 he was offered a call to Kings College in London, where he stayed until his retirement in 1988. He then moved to Cambridge where he held an extraordinary fellowship at Wolfson College from 1988 to 1990.

One topic to which Mason devoted himself in particular in his research career was optics. He was particularly interested in the spectroscopy of optically active molecules. One of the hallmarks of his research since the 1950s has been the effort to bring synthetic chemistry, experimental spectroscopy and theory together. He made important contributions to the formulation of a comprehensive theory of the light components of cholesteric liquid crystals.

Mason's interest in the history of Wadham College and especially in John Wilkins , one of the founders of the Royal Society, has led him to excel not only as a chemist but also as a historian of science since the 1950s. His book "A History of the Sciences" has been translated into at least seven languages ​​and has been reprinted again and again since it was first published in 1956.

Mason had been a member of the Chemical Society (later Rosal Society of Chemistry, RSC) since 1945, on whose advisory board he sat from 1964 to 1969 and from 1978 to 1981. In 1991 he headed the historical group of the RSC, which he chaired until 1994.

In the 1950s, Mason married the chemist Joan Banus, who like him retired in 1988 and died in 2004. The marriage resulted in three sons, Oliver, Andrew and Lionel.

Fonts

  • A History of the Sciences , 1956.
  • Molecular Optical Activity and the Chiral Discriminations , 1982.
  • Chemical Evolution: Origins of the Elements, Molecules and Living Systems , 1991.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Stephen Finney Mason at academictree.org, accessed on 2 January of 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Mason, Stephen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mason, Stephen Finney (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British chemist and historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Leicester
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 2007