28 Facts About Henry Moseley

Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley was an English physicist, whose contribution to the science of physics was the justification from physical laws of the previous empirical and chemical concept of the atomic number.

When World War I broke out in Western Europe, Henry Moseley left his research work at the University of Oxford behind to volunteer for the Royal Engineers of the British Army.

Henry Moseley was assigned to the force of British Empire soldiers that invaded the region of Gallipoli, Turkey, in April 1915, as a telecommunications officer.

Henry Moseley was shot and killed during the Battle of Gallipoli on 10 August 1915, at the age of 27.

Henry Moseley, known to his friends as Harry, was born in Weymouth in Dorset in 1887.

Henry Moseley's father Henry Nottidge Moseley, who died when Moseley was quite young, was a biologist and a professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Oxford, who had been a member of the Challenger Expedition.

Henry Moseley's mother was Amabel Gwyn Jeffreys, the daughter of the Welsh biologist and conchologist John Gwyn Jeffreys.

Henry Moseley was the British women's champion of chess in 1913.

Henry Moseley had been a very promising schoolboy at Summer Fields School, and he was awarded a King's scholarship to attend Eton College.

In 1906, Henry Moseley entered Trinity College of the University of Oxford, where he earned his bachelor's degree.

Immediately after graduation from Oxford in 1910, Henry Moseley became a demonstrator in physics at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Sir Ernest Rutherford.

Henry Moseley declined a fellowship offered by Rutherford, preferring to move back to Oxford, in November 1913, where he was given laboratory facilities but no support.

In 1913, Henry Moseley observed and measured the X-ray spectra of various chemical elements that were found by the method of diffraction through crystals.

Henry Moseley discovered a systematic mathematical relationship between the wavelengths of the X-rays produced and the atomic numbers of the metals that were used as the targets in X-ray tubes.

Hence, Henry Moseley's discovery demonstrated that the atomic numbers of elements are not just rather arbitrary numbers based on chemistry and the intuition of chemists, but rather, they have a firm experimental basis from the physics of their X-ray spectra.

Henry Moseley's experiments confirmed these predictions, by showing exactly what the missing atomic numbers were, 43 and 61.

Henry Moseley predicted the existence of element 61, a lanthanide whose existence was previously unsuspected.

Henry Moseley's discovery showed that atomic numbers were not arbitrarily assigned, but rather, they have a definite physical basis.

Henry Moseley postulated that each successive element has a nuclear charge exactly one unit greater than its predecessor.

Henry Moseley redefined the idea of atomic numbers from its previous status as an ad hoc numerical tag to help sorting the elements into an exact sequence of ascending atomic numbers that made the Periodic Table exact.

Henry Moseley mentioned the two scientists above in his research paper, but he did not actually mention Bohr, who was rather new on the scene then.

Simple modifications of Rydberg's and Bohr's formulas were found to give a theoretical justification for Henry Moseley's empirically derived law for determining atomic numbers.

The X-ray spectrometers as Henry Moseley knew them worked as follows.

In some cases, Henry Moseley found it necessary to modify his equipment to detect particularly soft X-rays that could not penetrate either air or paper, by working with his instruments in a vacuum chamber.

Sometime in the first half of 1914, Henry Moseley resigned from his position at Manchester, with plans to return to Oxford and continue his physics research there.

However, World War I broke out in August 1914, and Henry Moseley turned down this job offer to instead enlist with the Royal Engineers of the British Army.

Henry Moseley served as a technical officer in communications during the Battle of Gallipoli, in Turkey, beginning in April 1915, where he was killed by a sniper on 10 August 1915.

Henry Moseley is one of the immortals of science, and though he would have made many other additions to our knowledge if his life had been spared, the contributions already credited to him were of such fundamental significance, that the probability of his surpassing himself was extremely small.