Sir Walter Noel Hartley 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". ...

DSc (1845-11 September 1913) was an English chemist. He was a pioneer of

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets electromagnetic spectra. In narrower contexts, spectroscopy is the precise study of color as generalized from visible light to all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spectro ...

, and the first person to establish a relationship between the wavelengths of spectral lines of the elements and their positions in the

periodic table The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows (" periods") and columns (" groups"). It is an icon of chemistry and is widely used in physics and other s ...

(published in 1883), and he studied also the relationship between the structure and spectra of a wide variety of organic compounds. In 1881, he hypothesized the presence of ozone in the atmosphere.

Life

He was born in Lichfield in Staffordshire on 3 February 1847, the son of Thomas Hartley a portrait painter and his wife, Caroline Lockwood. He studied Science at Edinburgh University and Marburg in Germany. He married Mary Laffan in 1882 and they had one son John who was killed in the First World War. From 1871 to 1879 he lectured in chemistry at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

. He was then given a professorship at the Royal College of Science in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, remaining in this role until retiring in 1911. (Obituary 12 September 1913) In 1877 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Alexander Crum Brown, Sir James Dewar, John Hutton Balfour, and Sir William Turner. His work also led to his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1884, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate ( D.Sc.) by the Royal University of Ireland in October 1901. He was knighted in 1911, following retiral. He died in Braemar on 11 September 1913.

Works

His published works included: 'Air and its Relations to Life' (1876), 'Water, Air and Disinfectants' (1877) and 'Quantitative Analysis' (1887).Walter Noel Hartley's 1907 article, 'On the Thermochemistry of Flame Spectra at High Temperatures' in the Proceedings of the Royal Society is available to preview
here
/ref> He was awarded a gold medal at the 1904 St Louis Exposition, for scientific applications of photography and a silver medal in chemical arts. In 1906 he gained the Longstaff Medal of the Chemical Society for researches in spectro-chemistry, and in 1908, the Grand Prix for spectrographic research at the Franco-British Exhibition. He was president of Section B (Chemistry) of the British Association, 1903–04.

Family

Hartley married novelist Mary Laffan (1849–1916) in 1882. He was survived by one son, Walter John Hartley, who died whilst serving in the British Army during the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

at Gallipoli in 1915.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartley, Walter Noel Fellows of the Royal Society 1845 births People from Lichfield 1913 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Alumni of the University of Edinburgh