Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1904

Sir William Ramsay

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1904 was awarded to Sir William Ramsay "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system".

After graduating from Tübingen, Ramsay returned to Glasgow to work at Anderson College (1872–74) and then at the University of Glasgow (1874–80). During this period, Ramsay’s research focused on alkaloids (complex chemical compounds derived from plants). He studied their physiological action and established their structural relationship to pyridine, a nitrogen-containing compound closely resembling benzene. In 1879 he turned to physical chemistry to study the molecular volumes of elements at their boiling points. Following his appointment to the chair of chemistry at University College, Bristol (1880–87; he became principal of the college in 1881), he continued this research with the British chemist Sydney Young; they published more than 30 papers on the physical characteristics of liquids and vapours. This work helped Ramsay to develop the technical and manipulative skills that later formed the hallmark of his work on the noble gases. In 1887 Ramsay became professor of general chemistry at University College London, where he remained until his retirement in 1913. For several years he continued to work on projects related to the properties of liquids and vapours, and in 1893 he and chemist John Shields verified Hungarian physicist ’s law for the constancy of the rate of change of molecular surface energy with temperature. During the following year, Ramsay began the research that was eventually to make him the most famous chemist in Britain—the discovery of the noble gases.

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