Neil Bartlett (chemist)

Neil Bartlett ( born September 15, 1932 in Newcastle -upon- Tyne, England; † August 5, 2008 in Walnut Creek, California, United States) was a British- American chemist who primarily for his pioneering breakthrough in noble gas chemistry awareness obtained.

Biography

Neil Bartlett was born on 15 September 1932 in England. He began early for chemistry to be interested and directed as a child in his parents' house a small laboratory, a, by carrying out experiments with chemicals from the local department store. After finishing school he went to the University of Durham, where he graduated in 1954 and 1958 made ​​the doctoral degree earned. In the same year the appointment of the University of British Columbia came in Vancouver ( Canada ), where he ultimately became a professor. In the time at this university he achieved a breakthrough in the noble gas chemistry. In 1966 he became professor at Princeton, where he worked at the famous Bell Labs.

The Royal Society of Chemistry awarded him the 1962 Corday - Morgan Medal. In 1969 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. From 1969 until his retirement in 1993 Bartlett was a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. However, he was still active until 1999 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a scientist. In 2000 he obtained the U.S. citizenship. Neil Bartlett died on 5 August 2008 at an aortic aneurysm.

Research

During his time as a lecturer at the University of British Columbia to Bartlett dealt with noble gases, which were previously regarded as inert, so as not reactive. In the course of his research Bartlett noted that it is possible dioxygen O2 by platinum hexafluoride PtF6 readily oxidized to dioxygenyl cation O2 . Based on the finding that the first ionization energy of xenon is almost equal to the first ionization energy of dioxygen, Bartlett suspected that xenon would also be oxidized by platinum hexafluoride. In the experiment, this assumption turned out to be correct, however, did not arise, as was first believed, Xe PtF6, but a mixture of Fluoroxenyl connections. Shortly after this breakthrough in Münster the German chemist Rudolf Hoppe the synthesis of xenon difluoride XeF2.