William Hyde Wollaston

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William Hyde Wollaston

William Hyde Wollaston (born August 6, 1766 in East Dereham ( Norfolk , England), † December 22, 1828 in London ) was an English doctor, physicist and chemist who discovered the chemical elements palladium and rhodium in 1803 .

Live and act

In 1793 he obtained a doctorate in medicine from the University of Cambridge . During his studies his interest in chemistry, crystallography and physics was aroused. After practicing as a doctor until 1800, he gave up medicine and devoted himself to these areas.

In 1802 he found seven dark lines in the spectrum of the sun . Independently of Joseph von Fraunhofer , he discovered the absorption lines with it . Joseph von Fraunhofer only succeeded in doing this in 1813. Since Fraunhofer used this discovery for his measurements on optical glasses and thus made it public, the absorption lines in the solar spectrum are also called Fraunhofer lines .

Also in 1802 he developed a refractometer that uses total reflection to determine the refractive index of a sample.

He developed a process for processing platinum ores and in 1803 discovered two previously unknown chemical elements , palladium and rhodium. In 1807 Wollaston developed a drawing camera with a prism, the Camera Lucida . In 1810 he discovered cystine . In 1817 he developed an angle measuring device, the dip sector . He also developed the so-called Wollaston prism in 1820 , which consists of two prisms assembled together . The Wollaston wire , a very fine wire made of platinum, is also named after him.

Honors

In 1793 he was elected a member of the Royal Society ; from 1804 to 1816 he was their secretary. The Royal Society awarded him the Copley Medal in 1802 and the Royal Medal in 1828 . Since 1820 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1822 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1816 he became a corresponding and in 1823 foreign member of the Académie des sciences . In 1824 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

The mineral wollastonite , the Wollaston Lake and the Wollaston Islands are named after him, as well as the lunar crater Wollaston .

The Wollaston Medal is awarded annually by the Geological Society of London for special achievements in the field of geology.

Fonts (selection)

literature

Web links

Commons : William Hyde Wollaston  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: William Hyde Wollaston  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 25, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Wollaston, William Hyde
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English doctor, physicist and chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1766
PLACE OF BIRTH East Dereham , Norfolk , England
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1828
Place of death London