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JAMES DEWAR

Sir James Dewar was a British chemist and physicist. He was born in 1842 at Kincardine-on-Forth and died in 1923. Educated at Dollar Academy, Edinburgh University - where he was assistant to Lord Playfair when professor of Chemistry, - and Ghent, in 1873 he was elected Jacksonian Professor of Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge, and in 1879 a Professorial Fellow of St. Peter's College. In the latter year he also became Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, London. Together with Frederick Abel he had a part in the invention of cordite but he is chiefly remembered for his work with the liquefaction of gasses - being the first to reduce hydrogen gas to the liquid and solid form - and researches on the electrical and other properties of matter at low temperatures. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, was awarded several medals and prizes for his scientific researches, including the Rumford Medal in 1894 for his investigations into the properties of matter at its lowest temperatures, this branch of science, with which the. liquefaction of air and gases is connected, being peculiarly his own. He became president of the British Association in 1902 and was knighted in 1904.
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