Mass spectrometry · 1877–1945
Francis William Aston
Aston began in fermentation chemistry, moved to work on discharge tubes, and joined Thomson at the Cavendish, where positive-ray analysis had suggested that neon might not be a single species. His response was to build a better instrument: a mass spectrograph whose electric and magnetic fields brought ions of the same mass-to-charge ratio to a focus regardless of their velocity spread, which is what made resolved isotopic lines possible.
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Contribution & context
From 1919 he used successive instruments to identify of most non-radioactive elements, formulated the whole-number rule, and measured the small departures from it that express nuclear binding energy. He received the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
RSC Periodic Table — NeonLANL Periodic Table — NeonRSC Periodic Table — NeonLANL Periodic Table — Neon
Discoveries in context
Elements that arrive by decay ↗
Several elements were first found as short-lived members of radioactive series, and explaining them forced chemists to accept that one place in the table can hold atoms of different mass.
Sources & further reading
- RSC Periodic Table — Neon ↗Royal Society of ChemistryReference explanation · Source checked
- LANL Periodic Table — Neon ↗Los Alamos National LaboratoryReference explanation · Source checked
- RSC Periodic Table — Neon ↗Royal Society of ChemistryReference explanation · Source checked
- LANL Periodic Table — Neon ↗Los Alamos National LaboratoryReference explanation · Source checked
Sources and further reading. What the review labels mean