Wendell Mitchell Latimer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wendell Mitchell Latimer (born April 22, 1893 in Garnett , Kansas , USA; † July 6, 1955 in Oakland , California ) was an American physical chemist who was mainly responsible for the development of the theory of hydrogen bonds and his book on oxidation states and redox potentials in aqueous solutions is known. This has also led to the fact that a representation of redox potentials of an element is called Latimer diagram after him .

Life

Latimer studied at the University of Kansas and the University of Chicago , then moved to the University of California, Berkeley . In 1919 he received his doctorate there under George Ernest Gibson . Then he was in Berkeley Instructor, from 1921 Assistant Professor, from 1924 Associate Professor and from 1931 Professor in Berkeley. 1941 to 1949 he was Dean of the College of Chemistry 1945 to 1949 Chairman (Chairman) of the Department of Chemistry.

He built an apparatus for liquefying hydrogen and taught gas liquefaction to his colleague William Francis Giauque , who later received the Nobel Prize for his work at low temperatures. He had a nuclear chemistry seminar with his PhD student Willard Libby in the 1930s . Libby's dissertation (1933) at Latimer contained many of the methods with which he later established radiocarbon dating. His nuclear chemistry seminar was also attended by Glenn T. Seaborg , Joseph William Kennedy , Sam Ruben and Arthur Wahl and was one of the most active nuclear chemistry research centers in the world at the start of World War II. During the Second World War it was therefore only logical that Latimer worked in the Manhattan Project and from 1942 to 1946 was director of the research group that studied the chemistry of plutonium . He also had a leadership role in the chemistry program at the University of California's Radiation Laboratory. In 1954 he became an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission. After the war, he was a staunch and influential proponent of the hydrogen bomb.

Services

Latimer's publication on the theory of the hydrogen bond is one of his outstanding achievements, as he had recognized that this bond is stronger than an ordinary dipole-dipole interaction. He worked with Worth H. Rodebush (who had been his teacher in Kansas as a teaching assistant).

He was also one of the discoverers of tritium in 1933 . He used the Allison Effect (a magneto-optical spectroscopic method) just discovered by Fred Allison . Since this fell into disrepute in the same year, the discovery is mostly attributed to Ernest Rutherford (1934).

Honors

Latimer received numerous honors, including in 1955 the William H. Nichols Medal of the American Chemical Society for pioneering studies on the thermodynamics of electrolytes, especially the entropy of ions in aqueous solution (laudation). In 1940 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , whose chemistry section he headed from 1947 to 1950. In 1948 he received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Kansas, in 1948 the Certificate of Merit from the US President and in 1953 he held the Faculty Research Lecture at the University of California.

Works (selection)

  • Joel Henry Hildebrand, Wendell Mitchell Latimer: Reference book of inorganic chemistry . The MacMillan Company, 1929, OCLC 173984 (2nd edition 1940, 3rd edition 1951).
  • Latimer, GN Lewis, GE Gibson: A revision of the entropy of the elements , J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 44, 1922, p. 1008
  • Wendell Mitchell Latimer, Richard E Powell: A laboratory course in general chemistry . Macmillan, New York June 1964, OCLC 291937 .
  • WM Latimer, WC Bray: A course in general chemistry , Macmillan 1923, 3rd edition 1940
  • Wendell Mitchell Latimer: The Oxidation States of the Elements and Their Potentials in Aqueous Solution . Prentice-Hall, New York 1938, OCLC 547346 (2nd edition 1952).
  • Latimer, Rodebush: Polarity and Ionization from the Standpoint of the Lewis Theory of Valence , J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 42, 1919, p. 1419

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Wendell Mitchell Latimer at academictree.org, accessed on February 25 2018th
  2. ^ Wendell Mitchell Latimer, Chemistry: Berkeley
  3. ^ WM Latimer, HA Young: The Isotopes of Hydrogen by the Magneto-Optic Method. The Existence of H3, Phys. Rev., Volume 44, 1933, p. 690.
personal data
SURNAME Latimer, Wendell Mitchell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Latimer, Wendell; Latimer, WM
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physical chemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Garnett , Kansas
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 1955
Place of death Oakland , California