John Aitken, FRS,

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

LLD (18 September 1839 – 14 November 1919) was a Scottish meteorologist, physicist and marine engineer. He was one of the founders of

cloud physics Cloud physics is the study of the physical processes that lead to the formation, growth and precipitation of atmospheric clouds. These aerosols are found in the troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere, which collectively make up the greatest p ...

and

aerosol An aerosol is a suspension (chemistry), suspension of fine solid particles or liquid Drop (liquid), droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be generated from natural or Human impact on the environment, human causes. The term ''aerosol'' co ...

science, who built the first apparatus to measure the number of dust and fog particles in the

atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosph ...

, a koniscope.

Life

Aitken was born at Darroch House in

Falkirk Falkirk ( ; ; ) is a town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, northwest of Edinburgh and northeast of Glasgow. Falkirk had a resident population of 32,422 at the ...

on 18 September 1839, one of eight children of Henry Aitken of Darroch, a Falkirk lawyer in the firm of Russell & Aitken. John was educated at Falkirk Grammar School and studied

marine engineering Marine engineering is the engineering of boats, ships, submarines, and any other marine vessel. Here it is also taken to include the engineering of other ocean systems and structures – referred to in certain academic and professional circ ...

Glasgow University The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in post-nominals; ) is a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ...

, undertaking his engineer training with Messrs Napier & Sons, the Glasgow shipbuilder. He returned to his home town of Falkirk, where he carried out his various experiments. In 1875 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

. His proposers were

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (26 June 182417 December 1907), was a British mathematician, mathematical physicist and engineer. Born in Belfast, he was the professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow for 53 years, where ...

Edward Sang Edward Sang FRSE FRSSA LLD (30 January 1805 – 23 December 1890) was a Scottish mathematician and civil engineer, best known for having computed large tables of logarithms, with the help of two of his daughters. These tables went beyond the ta ...

James Thomson Bottomley James Thomson Bottomley (10 January 1845 – 18 May 1926) was an Irish-born British physicist. He is noted for his work on thermal radiation and on his creation of 4-figure logarithm tables, used to convert long multiplication and division ca ...

and Allen Thomson. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

of London in 1889 and was awarded the

Royal Medal The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society. Two are given for "the mo ...

in 1917. He also received the

Keith Medal The Keith Medal was a prize awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy, for a scientific paper published in the society's scientific journals, preference being given to a paper containing a discovery, either in mathema ...

(1883-1885) and Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize (1893-6) from the

. In April 1902 he received an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

(

LL.D. A Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) is a doctoral degree in legal studies. The abbreviation LL.D. stands for ''Legum Doctor'', with the double “L” in the abbreviation referring to the early practice in the University of Cambridge to teach both canon law ...

) from the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

. He died at "Ardenlea", his villa on Redding Road in Falkirk 13 November 1919.

Work

He carried out experiments on atmospheric dust in relation to the formation of clouds and mists (1882), on the formation of

dew Dew is water in the form of droplets that appears on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening due to condensation. As the exposed surface cools by thermal radiation, radiating its heat, atmospheric moisture condenses at a rate grea ...

(1885) and on the laws of

cyclone In meteorology, a cyclone () is a large air mass that rotates around a strong center of low atmospheric pressure, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere as viewed from above (opposite to an ant ...

s (1891). His instrument for counting the dust particles in the air has been used in principle by many later workers. He also invented new forms of

thermometer A thermometer is a device that measures temperature (the hotness or coldness of an object) or temperature gradient (the rates of change of temperature in space). A thermometer has two important elements: (1) a temperature sensor (e.g. the bulb ...

screens which aided the development of meteorology. One of his experiments conducted with a self-designed apparatus provided the first evidence of new particle formation in the atmosphere. This work was documented in an article titled "On some nuclei of cloudy condensation", in the 39th volume of the ''Transactions of the

'' published in 1898. John Aitken was the author of a number of important pioneering discoveries "On Dust, Fogs and Clouds" (the title of an 1880 article he penned). As early as 1874, Aitken had concluded that when water vapour in the atmosphere condenses, it must condense on some solid particle, and thus, without the presence of dust and other aerosol particles in the air, there would be no formation of fog, clouds, or rain (that was however experimentally disproven by

C. T. R. Wilson Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (14 February 1869 – 15 November 1959) was a Scottish meteorologist and particle physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Compton for his invention of the cloud chamber. Education and earl ...

in 1895, who later discovered that ions created by

cosmic ray Cosmic rays or astroparticles are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the ...

s also work). In 1884, he concluded that the brilliant colours often seen in the sunset are due to the refraction of light by dust particles in the upper atmosphere. Today, his name is given by

atmospheric scientists Atmospheric science is the study of the Earth's atmosphere and its various inner-working physical processes. Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather forecasting. Climatology is the study o ...

to the smallest

atmospheric aerosol particles Particulate matter (PM) or particulates are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspension (chemistry), suspended in the atmosphere of Earth, air. An ''aerosol'' is a mixture of particulates and air, as opposed to the particulate ...

(Aitken nuclei), those with a radius less than 0.1 micrometres. This size range include the newly

nucleated The cell nucleus (; : nuclei) is a membrane-bound organelle found in eukaryotic cells. Eukaryotic cells usually have a single nucleus, but a few cell types, such as mammalian red blood cells, have no nuclei, and a few others including osteo ...

particles whose existence Aitken demonstrated.

Cargill Gilston Knott Cargill Gilston Knott FRS, FRSE LLD (30 June 1856 – 26 October 1922) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was a pioneer in seismological research. He spent his early career in Japan. He later became a Fellow of the Royal Society, ...

assembled and edited Aitken's works for the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and contributed an introductory Memoir: C. G. Knott (1923) Collected Scientific Papers of John Aitken, Cambridge University Press via

HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries. Its holdings include content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digit ...

Bibliography of Aitken's Papers

# Aitken, J. 1872
Melting and regelation of ice
Nature 6:396. # Aitken, J. 1873
Glacier motion
Nature 7(172):287–288. # Aitken, J. 1875. On boiling, condensing, freezing, and melting. Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts (1874–1875) 9:240–287. # Aitken, J. 1875
Experiments illustrating rigidity produced by centrifugal force
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1875–1876) 9(94):73–78. # Aitken, J. 1876. Experiments illustrating rigidity produced by centrifugal force. Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (1875–1876) 10(1):99–106. # Aitken, J. 1878. Experiments illustrating rigidity produced by centrifugal force. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Fifth series, 5(29):81–105. # Aitken, J. 1876–77. On ocean circulation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1876–1877) 9(98):394–400. # Aitken, J. 1880
On a new variety of ocular spectrum
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1878–1879) 10(104):40–44. # Aitken, J. 1880
On the distribution of temperature under the ice in frozen lakes
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1878–1879) 10(104):409–415. # Aitken, J. 1880. On dust, fogs, and clouds. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1880–1881) 11(108
14–18122–126
# Aitken, J. 1880. On dust, fogs, and clouds. Nature 23(583):195–197. # Aitken, J. 1881. Dust and fogs. Nature 23(588):311–312. # Aitken, J. 1881. Dust, fogs, and clouds. Nature 23(591):384–385. # Aitken, J. 1881. On dust, fogs, and clouds. Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine 24(148):308–310. # Aitken, J. 1882. On the colour of the Mediterranean and other waters. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1881–1882) 11:472–483. # Aitken, J. 1882–1883
On the effect of oil on a stormy sea
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1882–1883) 12:56–75. # Aitken, J. 1883. On dust, fogs, and clouds. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 30(1):337–368. # Aitken, J. 1883–84. The remarkable sunsets. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1
448–450647-660
(See

1883 eruption of Krakatoa Beginning on 20 May 1883, and ending on 21 October 1883, the volcanic island of Krakatoa, located in the Sunda Strait, had repeated, months long Types of volcanic eruptions, volcanic eruptions. The most destructive of these eruptions occurred o ...

.) # Aitken, J. 1884. On the formation of small clear spaces in dusty air. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1883–1884) 32:239–272. # Aitken, J. 1884. Second note on the remarkable sunsets. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1883–1884) 12:123–133. # Aitken, J. 1885. Chromomictors. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1884–1885) 13:122–130. # Aitken, J. 1885. On dew. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1885–1886) 13(121):446–450. # Aitken, J. 1885. On thermometer screens. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1885–1886) 13:632–642. # Aitken, J. 1886. On dew. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Fifth Series, 22(135):206–212; (137):363–368. # Aitken, J. 1887
Note on hoar-frost
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 14(2):121–125. # Aitken, J. 1888. On the number of dust particles in the atmosphere. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 35(1):1–19. # Aitken, J. 1889. Dust particles in the atmosphere at Ben Nevis Observatory. Nature 40:350–351. # Aitken, J. 1889. On improvements in the apparatus for counting the dust particles in the atmosphere. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 16(129):134–172. # Aitken, J. 1890. On the number of dust particles in the atmosphere of certain places in Great Britain and on the continent, with remarks on the relation between the amount of dust and meteorological phenomena. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1889–1890) 17(130):193–254. # Aitken, J. 1890. On the number of dust particles in the atmosphere of certain places in Great Britain and on the continent, with remarks on the relation between the amount of dust and meteorological phenomena. Nature 41(1061):394–396. # Aitken, J. 1891. On a simple pocket dust-counter. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1890–1891) 18(February):39–52. # Aitken, J. 1891. On a method of observing and counting the number of water particles in a fog. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1890–1891) 18:259–262. # Aitken, J. 1891. On the solid and liquid particles in clouds. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 36:313–319. # Aitken, J. 1892. On the number of dust particles in the atmosphere of certain places in Great Britain and on the continent, with remarks on the relation between the amount of dust and meteorological phenomena. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 37(3):17–49; (28):621–693. # Aitken, J. 1892. On some phenomena connected with cloudy condensation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 51(312):408–439. # Aitken, J. 1892–95. On some observations made without a dust counter on the hazing effect of atmospheric dust. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 20:76–93. # Aitken, J. 1893. Particles in fogs and clouds. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 37(20):413–425. # Aitken, J. 1893. Breath figures. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 20:94–97. # Aitken, J. 1894. Dust and meteorological phenomena. Nature 49(1275):544–546. # Aitken, J. 1894. Phenomena connected with cloudy condensation. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, July 1893, pp. 201–230. # Aitken, J. 1895. On the number of dust particles in the atmosphere of certain places in Great Britain and on the continent, with remarks on the relation between the amount of dust and meteorological phenomena. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 37(3):17–49; (28):621–693. # Aitken, J. 1896. Observations of atmospheric dust. In: Fassig, O. (ed), United States Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau Bulletin 11, Part III, pp. 734–754. # Aitken, J. 1898. On some nuclei of cloudy condensation. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 39(3):15–25. # Aitken, J. 1902. Report on atmospheric dust. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 42(2):479–489. # Aitken, J. 1903. On the formation of definitive figures by the deposition of dust. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A 201:551–558. # Aitken, J. 1905. Evaporation of musk and other odorous substances. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 25(10):894–902. # Aitken, J. 1912. The sun as a fog producer. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1911–1912) 32:183–215.

References

External links

Collected Scientific papers of John Aitken
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aitken, John Scottish meteorologists Scottish physicists 1839 births 1919 deaths Royal Medal winners Fellows of the Royal Society People from Falkirk Alumni of the University of Glasgow Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Aerosol scientists 19th-century Scottish engineers British marine engineers 19th-century British physicists 19th-century Scottish inventors

Life

Work

Bibliography of Aitken's Papers

See also

References

External links