Chemistry at Leeds: Retirement of Prof. W. R. Whytlaw-Gray, O.B.E., F.R.S.

Abstract

PROF. ROBERT W. WHYTLAW-GRAY is retiring from the chair of chemistry in the University of Leeds at the end of this month after twenty-two years service. During his administration, the Department of Chemistry has undergone many changes, including its entry into a new building, in the design and equipment of which he took a leading part, and which has proved to be almost ideally arranged for both teaching and research. Throughout his academic life at University College, London, in Bonn, at Eton or in Leeds, Prof. Whytlaw-Gray has devoted himself wholeheartedly to research work, whether in pursuit of exact knowledge for its own sake or (for the second time) in the application of his special experience to his country's war-time problems. Before going to Leeds, he had developed a technique for the examination of smokes with the ultra-microscope which led to the determination of particle size and number, and to the discovery that these aerial systems, unlike the more familiar hydrosols, are unstable and undergoing continuous coagulation. At Leeds, with the help of collaborators, notably Dr. Colvin, Mr. H. S. Patterson and Dr. W. Cawood, the coagulation process was fully explored, new methods developed both for counting the particles when suspended and after sedimentation, and, in a series of papers, the kinetics of smoke coagulation established on a sound quantitative basis. The results of these investigations and their bearing on aerial systems in general were summarized in the Liversidge Lecture delivered before the Chemical Society in 1935 and in a book entitled "Smokes" written in collaboration with H. S. Patterson.