FRANCIS WILLIAM ASTON
Francis William Aston
lived in the years 1877-1945. He studied at Cambridge and was a
Rutherford's student. After
studies he became Thomson's
assistant. They researched together the canal rays - they
discovered that neon is a mixture of two components of a different
mass - isotopes.
He was intrigued by
isotopes and driven by the desire to isolate
them. To that aim he constructed a special device - a mass spectrograph. Aston researched
213 out of the total of 276 isotopes. He became a Cambridge
University professor and a Royal Society member. In 1922 he was
awarded the Nobel prize.
In subsequent years the
scientist constructed new models of the mass spectrograph and researched
isotopes in more detail.
