William
Francis Giauque (/dʒiˈoʊk/; May 12, 1895 – March 28, 1982) was a
Canadian-born American chemist
and Nobel laureate recognized
in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero. He spent virtually all of his educational and
professional career at the University of California, Berkeley. William Francis
Giauque was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on
May 12, 1895. As his parents were U.S. citizens, they returned to the U.S. where he
attended public schools primarily in Michigan. Following the death of his
father in 1908, the family returned to Niagara Falls, where he studied at the
Niagara Falls Collegiate Institute. After graduation, he looked for work in
various power plants at Niagara Falls both for financial reasons and to pursue
a career in electrical engineering. He was widely unsuccessful. Eventually,
however, his application was accepted by the Hooker Electro-Chemical Company in Niagara Falls, New York,
which led him to employment in their laboratory. He enjoyed the work, and
decided to become a chemical engineer. After two years of employment, he
entered the College of Chemistry of
the University of California,
Berkeley, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors
in 1920. He entered graduate school at Berkeley, becoming a University Fellow
(1920–1921) and a James M. Goewey Fellow (1921–1922). He received the Ph.D.
degree in chemistry with a minor in physics in 1922. Although he began
university study with an interest in becoming an engineer, he soon developed an
interest in research under the influence of Professor Gilbert N. Lewis. Due to his outstanding performance as a
student, he became an Instructor of Chemistry at Berkeley in 1922 and after
passing through various grades of professorship, he became a full Professor of
Chemistry in 1934. He retired in 1962. He became interested in the third law of
thermodynamics as a field of research during his experimental
research for his Ph.D. research under Professor George Ernest Gibson comparing
the relative entropies of glycerine crystals and
glass. The principal objective of his researches was to demonstrate through
range of appropriate tests that the third law of thermodynamics is a basic natural
law. In 1926, he proposed a method for observing temperatures considerably
below 1 Kelvin (1 K is −457.87 °F or −272.15 °C). His work
with D.P.
MacDougall between 1933 and 1935 successfully employed them. He
developed a magnetic refrigeration device
of his own design in order to achieve this outcome, getting closer to absolute
zero than many scientists had thought possible. This trailblazing work, apart
from proving one of the fundamental laws of nature led to stronger steel,
better gasoline and more efficient processes in a range of industries. His
researches and that of his students included a large number of entropy
determinations from low temperature measurements, particularly on condensed
gases. The entropies and other thermodynamic properties of many gases were also
determined from quantum statistics and
molecular energy levels available from band spectra as well as other sources. His
correlated investigations of the entropy of oxygen with Dr. Herrick L. Johnston, led
to the discovery of oxygen isotopes 17
and 18 in the Earth's atmosphere and showed that physicists and chemists had
been using different scales of atomic weight for years without recognising it.