Aston revealed the existence of 212 of the 287 natural isotopes, thus showing that not only neon, but many of the elements in nature are made up of isotopes.
(1877-1945) English physicist and chemistry scientist, proved the existence of isotopes and analyzed the isotope structure of many atoms with the mass spectrograph he found.
He was born on September 1, 1877, in the town of Harborne in Birmingham.
He studied chemistry at Mason College in 1893.
In 1898, he conducted research in the field of stereochemistry with Frankland. After studying fermentation for a while, he joined a brewing company in 1900. However, realizing that he could not stay away from the university environment, he returned to his old school, now the University of Birmingham, in 1903 and focused his studies on atomic physics.
Aston, who became J J Thomson's assistant at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in 1910 and continued to work in the same laboratory until the end of his life, won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in the field of isotopes.
In 1921, he was elected a member of the Royal Society in London, and then a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Aston, who is also interested in astronomy, made trips to various parts of the world for this purpose and took a photograph of the Sun crown from Sumatra in 1925.
He watched solar eclipses from Canada and Japan in 1932 and 1936. Apart from his scientific studies, he also dealt with music and worked as a music critic for a while.
He died in Cambridge on 20 November 1945.
The discovery of X-rays and radioactivity towards the end of the 19th century had drawn Aston's attention to this subject even during his school years. In 1903, as a result of experiments he started in low-pressure gas cylinders, in 1908 he discovered a new "primary cathode dark region" in a tube filled with hydrogen and helium. This phenomenon is known today by his name. It is because of this interesting research that J J Thomson invited Aston to his laboratory. At that time Thomson was experimenting with a low-pressure electric discharge tube. He had obtained parabolic curves on the photograph by passing atoms (positive ions) that had lost some or all of their electrons through counter-acting electrostatic and magnetic fields. After two years of joint work, the two physicists observed in 1912 from these parabolic curves that neon has two components with atomic weights of 20 and 22.
Aston was also very interested in the radioactive isotope idea that Soddy was developing, so he set out to investigate the subject in this context. In 1913, with his precision weight measurement system, he was able to distinguish neon 22, which had the same characteristics as neon but was heavier; Later, the presence of neon 21 was also found.
When Aston returned to the laboratory in 1919 after World War I, he developed a mass spectrograph (spectrometer) using Thomson's tube. Positive ions passing through a very thin slit in this instrument were deflected by magnetic and electrostatic fields located in the same plane, unlike Thomson's. Thus, the positive beam split into its components, again unlike Thomson's, forming a mass spectrum on a photographic plane, regardless of the speed of its components. Using this instrument, Aston first proved that neon is a mixture of isotopes. This 1/100 precision spectrograph was followed by another five times stronger in 1927, and a 1/200 precision one in 1935.
With his discovery so perfected, Aston revealed the existence of 212 out of 287 natural isotopes, thus showing that not only neon but many of the elements in nature are composed of isotopes.
Starting from the fact that each ray has a separate mass/charge ratio, he measured the atomic weights of many elements and declared in 1919 that the atomic weights of the elements are integers. It was only the hydrogen atom that broke this integer rule. Working on this phenomenon, Aston, inspired by his contemporary Einstein's theory of finite relativity, which suggested that energy is equivalent to mass, thought that when a hydrogen atom with an isotope atomic weight of 1,008 turns into helium, most of its mass will be released as a very powerful energy. Indeed, this idea was confirmed by the construction of the atomic bomb.
When Aston explained the study of isotopes and the great power of atomic energy in his 1922 book Isotopes, his success had a huge impact. In the same year, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a mass spectrograph and confirming the existence of isotopes.