Dewar, Sir James (1842-1923). Knight. Chemist.

James Dewar was born the son of Thomas Dewar, vintner and innkeeper, and Ann Eadie in Kincardine-on-Forth, Scotland. As a child he attended local schools such as the Dollar Academy and he also learnt the art of violin making. In 1858 he attended Edinburgh University under James David Forbes, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Lyon Playfair, Professor of Chemistry. He became an assistant to Lyon Playfair from 1867 to 1868, subsequently becoming assistant to Alexander Crum Brown from 1868 to 1873. In 1867 he invented a mechanical device to represent Alexander Crum Brown's graphic notation for organic compounds. He worked on heat, chemical reactions, atomic and molecular weight determinations and spectroscopy. In 1869 he became a lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College of Edinburgh. In 1871 he married Helen Rose Banks. In 1873 he became assistant chemist to the Highland and Agricultural Society. He was elected Jacksonian Professor of Natural Experimental Philosophy, Cambridge, in 1873, and became Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at The Royal Institution of Great Britain (RI) in 1877. At the RI, Dewar worked on cryogenics and from 1877 to 1904, he wrote 78 papers on the subject of spectroscopy with George Downing Liveing. During the course of his work on cryogenics he invented the silver vacuum vessels known as the Dewar or Thermos flask. In 1878 he achieved the liquefaction of oxygen. From 1892 to 1895, he worked with A. Fleming, Professor of Electrical Engineering at University College London. He worked on conduction, thermo electricity, magnetic permeability and dielectric constants of metal and alloys. In 1896 he became Director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory at the RI. He worked on the liquefaction of gases and in 1898 he liquefied hydrogen. He was a member of the Explosives Committee from 1888 to 1889, inventing cordite with Sir Frederick Abel. From 1904 to 1914, he worked on low temperature calorimentry investigations; he later studied bubbles and thin films and infrared radiation from the sky by day and night. In 1904 he was knighted. He gained several awards for his work such as the Davy medal, the Copley medal and the Rumford medals of the Royal Society; the Albert medal of the Royal Society of Arts; and the Gunning Victoria Jubilee Prize for 1900-1904 of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He died, in office, in 1923.