Moseley, Henry Gwyn-Jeffreys

Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys (1887-1915) British physicist who... 

Courtesy of Lyman C. Newell Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley, 1887-1915. English physicist whc studied the X-ray spectra of more than fifty elements and discovered the relation existing between the atomic number of an element and the frequency of the X-rays which it emits when bombarded by cathode rays. At the age of twenty-seven years he was killed while in active service at the Dardanelles. 

Rutherford, E., Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley, Nature, 96, 33-4 (Sept. 9,... 

FIGURE 22 Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915). Photo and permission from Edgar Fahs Smith Collection. 

Henry Gwyn-Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915). English physicist. Moseley discovered the relationship between X-ray spec-tra and atomic number. A lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, he was killed in action at the age of 28 during the British campaign in Gallipoli, Turkey. 

Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915), ODNB DSB J. L. Heilbron, H.G.J. Moseley The Life and Letters of an English Physicist, 1887-1915, University of California Press, 1974. 

Moseley s law Lines in the x-ray spectra of elements have frequencies that depend on the proton number of the element. For a set of elements, a graph of the square root of the frequency of x-ray emission against proton number is a straight line (for spectral lines corresponding to the same transition). The law is named for the British physicist Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915). 

Phil. Mag., 1913, xxvi, 102 1914, xxvii, 703. Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (Weymouth, 23 November 1887-killed in action in the Dardanelles, 10 August 1915) studied in Oxford, was lecturer in physics and research fellow in Manchester (i910-13), then worked in Oxford in 1913-14. The work described in the first paper was done in Manchester, that in the second in Oxford y. Chem. Educ., 1947, xxiv, 482 (portr.). 

Three years later a new scientific method for identifying elements with specific atomic numbers was discovered in England. At the age of 27 Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley found a relationship between an element s atomic number and its X-ray frequency. Moseley s law, as the relationship is called, opened new possibilities for identifying elements (the method is described in Chapter 10 Blowpipe and Spectroscope). The young Moseley s achievement was thus epoch-making in the history of science. In 1915, the year after his discovery, he was killed in the war at the Dardanelles. 

---