Scottish chemist · 1852–1916
William Ramsay
William Ramsay discovered an entire column of the periodic table. Between 1894 and 1898 he found argon, neon, krypton and xenon, and he was also the first to isolate helium on Earth. For this he won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- Elements credited
- 4
- Discoveries
- 1894–1898
- Co-discoverers
- 2
- Where
- England
Discovery timeline
1894 · England
Argon is an inert noble gas and the third most common gas in Earth’s atmosphere, making up almost 1% of the air.
1898 · England
Neon is an inert noble gas that glows reddish-orange in an electric discharge. It is rare on Earth but the fifth most abundant element in the cosmos.
1898 · England
Krypton is a colourless, odourless noble gas found in trace amounts in air. It glows whitish when electrified.
1898 · England
Xenon is a heavy, rare noble gas. In 1962 it became the first noble gas shown to form a chemical compound.
The discoveries
It began with a puzzle from Lord Rayleigh: nitrogen taken from air was slightly denser than nitrogen made from chemicals. Ramsay removed all the nitrogen from a sample of air by passing it over hot magnesium, and a small amount of gas remained that would not react with anything. In 1894 he and Rayleigh announced argon, from the Greek for “lazy”.
A year later Ramsay found helium in a uranium mineral, confirming a gas previously seen only in the spectrum of the Sun. Argon and helium did not fit any existing group, so he predicted more members of a new family.
In 1898, working with Morris Travers, he liquefied air and let it evaporate slowly, collecting the last fractions to boil off. In a few weeks they found krypton (“hidden”), neon (“new”) and xenon (“stranger”), each identified by its unique spectrum of glowing lines.
Life and career
Ramsay was born in Glasgow and studied there and at Tübingen in Germany. He taught at Bristol before becoming professor of chemistry at University College London in 1887, where he did his noble gas work.
In later years he worked on radioactivity with Frederick Soddy, showing that radium continually produces helium, and measured the density of radon. He was knighted in 1902.
Also known for
- 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Showed radium decays and produces helium
- Founded the group that became the periodic table’s group 18