Mason College, before its incorporation into the University of Birmingham; this building was destroyed in 1964.
Francis Aston was born inHarborne, now part of Birmingham, on 1 September 1877.[6][7] He was the third child and second son of William Aston and Fanny Charlotte Hollis. He was educated at the Harborne Vicarage School and laterMalvern College in Worcestershire where he was a boarder. In 1893 Francis William Aston began his university studies atMason College (which was then external college of University of London) where he was taught physics byJohn Henry Poynting and chemistry byFrankland andTilden. From 1896 on he conducted additional research onorganic chemistry in a private laboratory at his father's house. In 1898 he started as a student of Frankland financed by a Forster Scholarship; his work concerned optical properties oftartaric acid compounds. He started to work onfermentation chemistry at the school of brewing in Birmingham and was employed by W. Butler & Co. Brewery in 1900. This period of employment ended in 1903 when he returned to the University of Birmingham under Poynting as an Associate.
After the death of his father, and a trip around the world in 1908, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Birmingham in 1909 but moved to theCavendish Laboratory inCambridge on the invitation ofJ. J. Thomson in 1910.[citation needed]
Birmingham University awarded him a BSc in Applied/Pure Science in 1910[citation needed] and a DSc in Applied/Pure Science in 1914.[11]
Joseph John Thomson revealed the nature of thecathode ray and then discovered the electron and he was now doing research on the positively charged "Kanalstrahlen" discovered byEugen Goldstein in 1886. The method of deflecting particles in the "Kanalstrahlen" by magnetic fields was discovered byWilhelm Wien in 1908; combining magnetic and electric fields allowed the separation of different ions by their ratio of charge and mass. Ions of a particular charge/mass ratio would leave a characteristic parabolic trace on a photographic plate, demonstrating for the first time that atoms of a single element could have different masses. The first sector fieldmass spectrometer was the result of these experiments.[12]
Replica of Aston's third mass spectrometer
It was speculations about isotopy that directly gave rise to the building of a mass spectrometer capable of separating the isotopes of the chemical elements. Aston initially worked on the identification ofisotopes in the elementneon and later chlorine and mercury.
In 1912, Aston discovered that the neon splits into two tracts, roughly corresponding to atomic mass 20 and 22. He named the mass 22 one "meta-neon", a name he took fromOccult Chemistry.[13]
First World War stalled and delayed his research on providing experimental proof for the existence of isotopes by mass spectroscopy and during the war, Aston worked at theRoyal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough as a Technical Assistant working on aeronautical coatings.[citation needed]
After the war, he returned to research at theCavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and completed building his firstmass spectrograph that he reported on in 1919.[14] Subsequent improvements in the instrument led to the development of a second and third instrument of improved mass resolving power and mass accuracy. These instruments employing electromagnetic focusing allowed him to identify 212 naturally occurring isotopes. In 1921, Aston became a member of theInternational Committee on Atomic Weights[15] and a fellow of theRoyal Society[2] and received theNobel Prize in Chemistry the following year.[16]
His work on isotopes also led to his formulation of thewhole number rule which states that "the mass of the oxygen isotope being defined [as 16], all the other isotopes have masses that are very nearly whole numbers", a rule that was used extensively in the development ofnuclear energy. The exact mass of many isotopes was measured leading to the result that hydrogen has a 1% higher mass than expected by the average mass of the other elements. Aston speculated about the subatomic energy and the use of it in 1936.
Isotopes[17] andMass-spectra and Isotopes[18] are his most well-known books.
Michael A. Grayson,Discovery of Isotopes of Elements (Part II: Francis William Aston), Profiles in Chemistry,Chemical Heritage Foundation
In his private life, he was a sportsman,cross-country skiing andskating in winter time, during his regular visits toSwitzerland andNorway; deprived of these winter sports during theFirst World War he started climbing. Between the ages of 20 and 25 he spent a large part of his spare time cycling. With theinvention of motorised vehicles he constructed acombustion engine of his own in 1902 and participated in theGordon Bennett auto race in Ireland in 1903. Not content with these sports he also engaged in swimming, golf, especially withRutherford and other colleagues in Cambridge,[19] tennis, winning some prizes at open tournaments in EnglandWales and Ireland and learning surfing inHonolulu in 1909. Coming from a musical family, he was capable of playing the piano, violin and cello at a level such that he regularly played in concerts at Cambridge. He visited many places around the globe on extensive travel tours starting from 1908 with a trip to Australia andNew Zealand which he visited again in 1938–1939.[2][20]
Aston was a skilled photographer and interested inastronomy. He joined several expeditions to study solar eclipses in Benkoeben in 1925,Sumatra in 1932, Magog in Canada on 31 August 1932 and KamishariHokkaido, Japan on June19th 1936. He also planned to attend expeditions to South Africa in 1940 andBrazil in 1945 in later life. He never married.
Aston died in Cambridge on 20 November 1945 at the age of 68.[5]
^"The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1922".The Nobel Prize. Retrieved22 October 2023.The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1922 was awarded to Francis William Aston "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule"
^Aston, Francis William (1922).Isotopes. London: E. Arnold. p. 152.
^KM Downard (2007). "Francis William Aston – the man behind the mass spectrograph".European Journal of Mass Spectrometry.13 (3):177–190.doi:10.1255/ejms.878.PMID17881785.S2CID25747367.
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