- Thomas Andrews (scientist)
Infobox Person
name = Thomas Andrews
birth_date = birth date|1813|12|19|mf=y
birth_place =Belfast ,Ireland
death_date = death date and age|1885|11|26|1813|12|19|mf=y
death_place =Belfast ,Ireland
occupation = chemist and physicistThomas Andrews FRS (
December 19 ,1813 –November 26 ,1885 ), was a chemist and physicist who did important work onphase transitions betweengas es andliquid s.Life
He was born in
Belfast ,Northern Ireland where his father was alinen merchant . He attended theBelfast Academy and theRoyal Belfast Academical Institution . In 1828 he went to theUniversity of Glasgow to studychemistry under ProfessorThomas Thomson , then studied atTrinity College, Dublin , where he gained distinction inclassics as well as inscience . Finally, atUniversity of Edinburgh in 1835 he was awarded a doctorate in medicine.Andrews began a successful medical practice in his native Belfast in 1835, also giving instruction in chemistry at the Academical Institution. In 1845 he was appointed vice-president of the newly established
Queen's University of Belfast , and professor of chemistry there. He held these two offices until his retirement in 1879 at age 66.Work
Andrews first became known as a scientific investigator with his work on the heat developed in chemical actions, for which the
Royal Society awarded him aRoyal Medal in 1844. Another important investigation, undertaken in collaboration withPeter Guthrie Tait , was devoted toozone .The work on which his reputation mainly rests, and which best displayed his experimental skill and resourcefulness, was concerned with the
liquefaction of gases. In the 1860s he carried out a very complete inquiry into thegas laws expressing the relations ofpressure ,temperature andvolume incarbon dioxide . In particular he established the concepts ofcritical temperature andcritical pressure , showing that the gas passes from thegaseous to the liquid state without any breach of continuity.In Andrews' experiments on phase transitions, he showed that carbon dioxide may be carried from any of the states which we usually call liquid to any of those which we usually call gas, without losing its homogeneity. These results were cited by the mathematical physicist
Willard Gibbs in support of theGibbs free energy equation. They also set off a race among researchers to liquify various other gases. In 1877-78Louis Paul Cailletet was the first to liquefy oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen.Bibliography
His scientific papers were published in a collected form in 1889, with a memoir by Professors Tait and Crum Brown.
References
*Thomas Andrews, "The Bakerian Lecture: On the Continuity of the Gaseous and Liquid States of Matter", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 159 (1869), pp. 575-590.
Further reading
* cite encyclopedia
last = Scott
first = E.L.
title = Andrews, Thomas
encyclopedia =Dictionary of Scientific Biography
volume = 1
pages = 160-161
publisher = Charles Scribner's Sons
location = New York
year = 1970
isbn = 0684101149
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.