William Lewis (physical chemist)

William Cudmore McCullagh Lewis (born June 29, 1885 in Belfast , † February 11, 1956 in Malvern ) was a British chemist ( physical chemistry ). He was a professor at the University of Liverpool .

Lewis studied physics and chemistry in Belfast (Royal University of Ireland) with a master's degree in 1906 and received his doctorate in 1908 at the University of Liverpool with Frederick George Donnan . He then spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow with Georg Bredig at the University of Heidelberg on a scholarship . In 1913 he became Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry in Liverpool. From 1937 he was Grant-Brunner Professor of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry. In 1948 he retired.

In 1918 he developed the collision theory of chemical reactions independently of Max Trautz in Germany, who published it in 1916, but Lewis knew nothing about it due to the First World War.

In 1926 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and received a D.Sc. in Liverpool.

He was married and had a son, Ian, who became a physicist.

Fonts

• A system of physical chemistry, 3 volumes, Longmans, Green 1923 to 1925, Volume 3, Archives

literature

• CEH Bawn, in Biographical Memoirs Fellows Royal Society 1958

Individual evidence

1. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of William Cudmore McCullagh Lewis at academictree.org, accessed March 7, 2018.