Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys
Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys
(mōz`lē), 1887–1915, English physicist, grad. Trinity College, Oxford, 1910. He began his research under Ernest Rutherford while serving as lecturer at the Univ. of Manchester and soon devoted himself entirely to research. Extending the work of Max von LaueLaue, Max von, 1879–1960, German physicist, studied under Max Planck. From 1919 he was professor of theoretical physics at the Univ. of Berlin. He worked out a method for measuring X-ray wavelengths, in which a crystal (rock salt) is used, producing diffraction of the
..... Click the link for more information. and of W. H. BraggBragg, Sir William Henry,
1862–1942, English physicist, educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served on the faculties of the Univ. of Adelaide in Australia (1886–1908), the Univ. of Leeds (1909–15), and the Univ.
..... Click the link for more information. and W. L. BraggBragg, Sir William Lawrence,
1890–1971, English physicist, b. Adelaide, Australia, educated in Australia and at Trinity College, Cambridge; son of W. H. Bragg. He was professor of physics at Victoria Univ., Manchester, from 1919 to 1937.
..... Click the link for more information. on the X-ray spectra of elements, Moseley made systematic studies of the relation between the bright-line spectra of different elements. He found that the frequency of vibration of the X rays emitted by each element when bombarded with cathode rays bore a simple relationship to whole ordinal numbers. These ordinal numbers are the atomic numbers; Moseley concluded that the atomic number is equal to the charge on the nucleus. When the elements are arranged according to their atomic numbers the sequence, although almost the same as MendeleevMendeleev, Dmitri Ivanovich
, 1834–1907, Russian chemist. He is famous for his formulation (1869) of the periodic law and the invention of the periodic table, a classification of the elements; with Lothar Meyer, who had independently reached similar conclusions, he was
..... Click the link for more information. 's arrangement in order of increasing atomic weight, differs slightly; these differences account for the few discrepancies inherent in the Mendeleev system (see periodic lawperiodic law,
statement of a periodic recurrence of chemical and physical properties of the elements when the elements are arranged in order of increasing atomic number.
..... Click the link for more information. ). The genius of Moseley's work was widely recognized. He was killed at Gallipoli in World War I.
Bibliography
See biography by J. L. Heilbron (1974).