science · 20 September 1842 · 182 years ago
birth
Born 20 Sep 1842; died 27 Mar 1923 at age 80.
Scottish chemist and physicist who blurred the line between physics and chemistry and advanced the research frontier in several fields at the turn of the century. He gave dazzling lectures and his study of low-temperature phenomena entailed making the Dewar flask, an insulating double-walled flask of his own design by creating a vacuum between the two silvered layers of steel or glass (1892), which led to the domestic Thermos bottle. In Jun 1897, The Scientific American reported that “Dewar has just succeeded in liquefying fluorine gas at a temperature of -185 ºC.” He obtained liquid hydrogen in 1898. Dewar also invented cordite, the first smokeless powder.
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