Guest post by Jessica Breen
‘The noblest exercise of the mind within doors, and most befitting a person of quality, is study’ – Ramsay
A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Jack Dunitz at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. Little did I know that he was the academic great-great-grandson of the UK’s first chemistry Nobel Laureate, Sir William Ramsay. After discovering this connection, I decided to delve deeper to see which other chemistry legends Ramsay is connected to.
Ramsay began his career as an organic chemist, but his prominent discoveries were in the field of inorganic chemistry. At the meeting of the British Association in August 1894, Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh both announced the discovery of argon, after independent research. Ramsay then discovered helium in 1895 and systematically researched the missing links in this new group of elements to find neon, krypton, and xenon1. These findings led to Ramsay winning his Nobel prize in 1904 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’.
Ramsay worked with a wide range of chemists before winning his Nobel prize. At the start of his career Ramsay worked with Rudolf Fittig in Tübingen, Germany. Fittig, a successful organic chemist, is particularly known for discovering the pinacol coupling reaction. Ramsay’s noteworthy academic brothers via Fittig are Ira Remsen and Theodor Zincke. Remsen is recognised for contributing to the discovery of the first artificial sweetener: his co-worker, Constantin Fahlberg, accidentally discovered Saccharin by failing lab etiquette 101 – not washing his hands after a day working in the laboratory.2 On the other hand, Zincke is most famous for supervising the father of nuclear chemistry, Otto Hahn, who claimed the Nobel prize in chemistry (1944) ‘for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei’.3 This makes Ramsay the academic uncle of Hahn.
As well as academic brothers and nephews, Ramsay’s direct academic descendants have also achieved greatness. Frederick Soddy, Ramsay’s academic son, carried out research into radioactivity and proved the existence of isotopes, for which he won the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry.4 Unfortunately for the chemistry community, Soddy’s interests diverted to economics and politics, so he has no prominent academic offspring to speak of. Interestingly, he also has a lunar crater named after him! Other chemistry Nobel prize-winning descendants of Ramsay include the two-time winner, Frederick Sanger (1958, 1980), and Barry Sharpless (2001), who are both his academic great-great-grandsons. Ramsay also has more diverse Nobel prize winners in his family tree, with two winners for physiology or medicine: Har Gobind Khorana (1968) and Konrad Bloch (1964).
This summary of Ramsay’s academic family is by no means the complete list, but this does demonstrate that one great chemist can have an enormous effect on the generations of chemists to come. As you can see, Nobel prize winners seem to have excellent academic dynasties, but perhaps it isn’t the fact that their mentor won a Nobel prize that inspired them to greatness but their work ethic and abstract way of thinking.
In future posts we will look at other Nobel prize winners and the effect that they may have had on their academic offspring. If there is a particular winner that you would like to see featured, you can contact me on Twitter (@Jessthechemist).
References
1: Sir William Ramsay – Biographical. Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 6 Jan 2014.
2: Chemical Heritage Magazine ‘the persuit of sweet:a history of saccharin’
3: Otto Hahn – Biographical. Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 6 Jan 2014.
4: Frederick Soddy – Biographical. Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 7 Jan 2014.
