Augustus Matthiessen

Infobox_Scientist
name = Augustus Matthiessen


image_width =
caption = Augustus Matthiessen
birth_date = birth date|1831|1|2
birth_place = London United Kingdom
residence =
nationality = British
death_date = death date and age|1870|10|6|1831|1|2
death_place = London United Kingdom|field =
work_institution = Mary’s Hospital Medical School St. Bartholomew’s Hospital
alma_mater = University of Gießen
doctoral_advisor = Johann Heinrich Buff
doctoral_students =
influences = Robert Bunsen
Gustav Kirchhoff
August Wilhelm von Hofmann
influenced =
known_for = isolation of calcium and strontium; Matthiessen's rule
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

Augustus Matthiessen, FRS (2 January 1831, London – 6 October 1870, London), the son of a merchant, was a British chemist and physicist who obtained his PhD in Germany at the University of Gießen in 1852 with Johann Heinrich Buff. He then worked with Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg from 1853 to 1856. His work in this period included the isolation of calcium and strontium in their pure states. He then returned to London and studied with August Wilhelm von Hofmann from 1857 at the Royal College of Chemistry, and set up his own research laboratory at 1 Torrington Place, Russell Square, London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1861. He worked as a lecturer on chemistry at St Mary's Hospital, London, from 1862 to 1868, and then at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, from 1868. His research was chiefly on the constitution of alloys and opium alkaloids. He contributed to both physics and chemistry. (Please see references below.) For his work on metals and alloys, he was awarded the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1869.

Matthiessen committed suicide in 1870 under "severe nervous strain".

Legacy

The Matthiessen's rule for carrier mobility probably originated from Augustus Matthiessen's study of electrical conduction of metals and alloys. (Please see references below. Note: In Matthiessen's time, the concept of "mobility" was not established yet. The modern form of Matthiessen's rule for electron mobility (or hole mobility) is actually an extension of Matthiessen's work in the 19th century by subsequent scientists.)In 1997, Rudolf de Bruyn Ouboter briefly mentioned Matthiessen's 1864 paper in a figure inside his article about Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's discovery of superconductivity (Scientific American, March 1997).

References

*Augustus Matthiessen, "On the electric conducting power of the metals", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 148 (1858), pp. 383-387.
*Augustus Matthiessen and Carol Vogt, "On the influence of temperature on the electric conductive-power of thallium and iron", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 153 (1863), pp. 369-383.
*Augustus Matthiessen and Carol Vogt, "On the influence of temperature on the electric conductive-power of alloys", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 154 (1864), pp. 167-200.
*A. Matthiessen and G.C. Foster, "Researches into the chemical constitution of narcotine and its products of decomposition Part I", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 153 (1863), pp. 345-367.
*A. Matthiessen and G.C. Foster, "Researches into the chemical constitution of narcotine and its products of decomposition Part II", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 157 (1867), pp. 657-667.
*Augustus Matthiessen, "Researches into the chemical constitution of narcotine and its products of decomposition Part III", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 159 (1869), pp. 661-665.
*Augustus Matthiessen and C.R.A. Wright, "Researches into the chemical constitution of narcotine and its products of decomposition Part IV", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 159 (1869), pp. 667-678.
*Rudolf de Bruyn Ouboter, "Heike Kamerlingh Onnes's discovery of superconductivity", Scientific American, March 1997, pp. 98-103. (A figure mentioning Matthiessen's 1864 paper appears on page 102.)

ources

*Entry for Augustus Matthiessen in Dictionary of National Biography (1903)
* [http://royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=((text)='Matthiessen') Entry for Matthiesson] in the Royal Society's Library and Archive catalogue's details of Fellows (accessed 20 April 2008)
* [http://www.rsc.org/delivery/_ArticleLinking/DisplayArticleForFree.cfm?doi=JS8712400605&JournalCode=JS Obituary of Augustus Matthiessen in Meetings of the Royal Society] (pp 615-617)