Francis Aston

Francis William Aston (1 September 1877 in Birmingham - 20 November 1945 in London) was an English physicist, chemist and university professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of a large number of non-radioactive isotopes using a mass spectrograph.

Biography

In 1903 he was awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Birmingham. In 1909 he moved to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, invited by Joseph John Thomson, where he worked on the identification of neon isotopes and investigated electrical discharges in low-pressure tubes. Later he was a professor at Trinity College, Cambridge and in 1921 he entered the Royal Society and in 1935 he was elected president of the International Atomic Committee.

Scientific research

He returned to these studies after World War I in 1919, and invented a mass spectrograph that allowed him to discover, due to mass differences, a certain number of isotopes in non-radioactive elements, which allowed him to identify no less of 212 of the 287 natural isotopes.

In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of a large number of non-radioactive isotopes using a mass spectrograph.

His works include Isotopes (1922) and Mass-Spectra and Isotopes (1933).

Acknowledgments

• He was awarded in 1922 with the Hughes medal, granted by the Royal Society "for his discovery of the isotopes of a large number of elements by the method of positive rays".

• In his honor the moon crater Aston was baptized.