August 10, 1915 – Death of Henry Moseley, quantitatively justified the concept of atomic number

Henry Moseley

Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley entered Trinity College, Oxford University in Physics and Chemistry in 1910 and then went to Oxford University to work under Ernest Rutherford.

In 1914, he decided to return to Oxford with the intention of continuing his research career, but World War I arose and he enlisted in the Royal Engineers division. He was posted to Gallipoli, where, in 1915, he was shot in the head by a sniper while telegraphing an order. He died at the age of 27.

His main contribution to science was, in advanced chemistry, providing fundamental support for the Bohr atomic model defined in detail by Rutherford and Antonius van den Broek, mentioning that atomic nuclei contain positive charges equal to their atomic number.

At the suggestion of the latter, he studied the X-ray spectra of fifty elements and was able to quantitatively justify the concept of atomic number by means of Moseley's Law. Postulated in 1913, this empirical law states that the square root of the frequency of X-rays produced when an element is bombarded with cathode rays is proportional to the element's atomic number.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: Henry Moseley

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