William F. Giauque

 William Giauque was born in Niagara Falls in 1895. At first, he wanted to be an electrical engineer but working at a chemical plant piqued his interest, causing him to become a chemical engineer. Two years later he went to the College of Chemistry of the University of California where he received a B.Sc degree honors in 1920. Later he got a Masters then a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a minor in Physics. Giauque became a professor of Chemistry in 1934. His interest in the third law of thermodynamics led to many accurate tests saying the third law of thermodynamics is a basic natural law. Researchers included large numbers of accurate entropy determination from low-temperature measurements in condensed gases. The thermodynamic properties of many gases were determined from quantum statistics and molecular energy levels available from band spectra and other sources. In this investigation, he looked at oxygen which led to discovering oxygen isotopes 17 and 18 in the atmosphere. Giauque also found that chemists and physicists were using different atomic weight scales. Another investigation on the effect of magnetic fields on the entropies of paramagnetic substances led to the invention of the adiabatic demagnetization method of producing temperatures considerably below 1° absolute.  Giauque has been published in 75 papers. William Giauque has received many honorary degrees and medals. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Philosophical Society, the American Chemical Society, the Institut International du Frois, and others. William Giauque died on March 28th, 1982.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1949. NobelPrize.org. (n.d.). https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1949/giauque/biographical/