Leo Brewer
Encyclopedia
Leo Brewer 1919-2005 was an American physical chemist, considered by many to be the founder of modern high-temperature chemistry. He was born 13 June 1919 in St. Louis, Missouri
and died 22 February 2005 in Lafayette, California
, of the sequelae of Beryllium
poisoning from his work in World War II
. Brewer received his BS from the California Institute of Technology
in 1940 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley
, in 1942. Brewer joined the Manhattan Project
following his graduate work, and joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley
in 1946. Leo Brewer married Rose Sturgo (died 1989) in 1945. They had three children, Beth Gaydos, Roger Brewer, and Gail Brewer.
, where his father worked as a shoe repairman. In 1929, in the wake of the Great Depression, his family moved to Los Angeles, California
. It was only six years later that Brewer decided to attend the California Institute of Technology. As an undergraduate at Caltech, Leo Brewer was strongly influenced by Professors E. Swift and D. Yost, and had his first taste of research studying equilibria and kinetics of olefin hydration under Professors D. Pressman and H. J. Lucas. After the B.S. in 1940, Professor Linus Pauling
persuaded him to pursue advanced instruction at the University of California, Berkeley
, where he continued kinetic studies under Professor Axel Olson. In the shadow of the United States' entrance into World War II
, Brewer pursued his Ph.D. with steady determination, and completed his dissertation on the effect of electrolytes upon the kinetics of aqueous reactions in November 1942, after only 28 months.
, then available only in trace amounts; developing refractory materials capable of containing molten plutonium without excessive contamination, even if the worst predictions should be true; and developing a micro-analytical procedure for the determination of oxygen.
The first of these tasks led to a fundamental examination of the behavior of all elements at high temperature, and resulted in a series of papers describing the high-temperature behavior of metals, oxides, halides, and many other compounds. The second task led to the development of the refractory sulfides of Caesium
(Ce), Thorium
(Th), and Uranium
(U). The third task led to development of a micro method of analysis of electropositive metals using a molten platinum bath.
The immediate result of the research was the creation of the new material Caesium Sulfide (CeS), from which they made several hundred crucibles for use at Los Alamos National Laboratory
. Brewer's crucibles were ready when the plutonium became available.
, Brewer was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California
. He rose steadily through the ranks, achieving the rank of full professor in 1955. Brewer served as a faculty member of the Department of Chemistry for over sixty years, during which time he directed 41 Ph.D. candidates, and nearly two-dozen post-doctoral research associates.
In addition to his academic appointment, Brewer was associated with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
(formerly the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory) from 1943–1994, and served as Director of the Inorganic Materials Research Division of LBNL from its inception in 1961 until 1975.
Brewer's dual appointment afforded him the opportunity to take an active role in all levels of academic instruction, both inside and outside of the laboratory. Besides providing classroom instruction in solid-state chemistry, heterogeneous equilibria, and inorganic chemistry, Brewer also delivered lectures and supervised laboratory work for laboratory courses in freshman chemistry, advanced quantitative analysis, instrumental analysis, inorganic synthesis, inorganic reactions, and organic chemistry, as well as courses in chemical thermodynamics from the sophomore to graduate student level. In order to ensure a high standard of instruction at even the most basic levels, Brewer initiated a course for freshman-chemistry teaching assistants that reviewed principles and certified their ability to adequately fulfill their responsibilities.
Brewer was a caring and gifted teacher who was greatly admired by students and colleagues alike. In 1966 he was selected by the Academic Senate at UC Berkeley to deliver the annual Faculty Research Lecture. The title of his lecture was, "A Broad University Education Leads to Astrochemistry." In 1988, in recognition of his achievements as an educator, he received the Henry B. Linford Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Electrochemical Society. Upon his official retirement from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, he was presented with the Berkeley Citation, and an academic symposium was held in his honor.
' National Research Council
Committee on High-Temperature Chemistry, as well as organizing the first Gordon Research Conference
on High-Temperature Chemistry in 1960. At the request of the Atomic Energy Commission
and its successors, the Energy Research and Development Administration
, and the Department of Energy
, Brewer worked on numerous committees, including the DOE Council for Materials Sciences and the DOE Selection Committee for the Fermi Award.
He also maintained close ties with organizations that represented the international scientific community, including the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
, and the International Atomic Energy Agency
.
Brewer sat on the editorial advisory boards of many respected scholarly journals and academic monograph series, including the Journal of Physical Chemistry Solids (1956–1992), Progress in Organic Chemistry (1958–1969), the Journal of Chemistry Physics (associate editor, 1959–1963), Progress in Inorganic Chemistry (1967–2005), Progress in Solid State Chemistry (1967–1996), High Temperature Science (founder, 1968–2005), the Journal of Chemistry Thermodynamics (1969–1978), the Journal of Solid State Chemistry (1969–1984), the Journal of the Electrochemical Society (divisional editor, 1976–1984), the Journal of Chemical Engineering Data, the Journal of Physical Chemistry Ref. Data (1978–1981, 1989–1992), the Metals Handbook (co-editor, 1983), the Princeton Series in the Physico-Chemical Sciences for Technology (co-editor, 1983–2005), and the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (1991).
In addition, Brewer single-handedly compiled and maintained Part II of the Bibliography on the High-Temperature Chemistry and Physics of Materials.
Besides his distinguished career as a chemist and educator, Brewer was also an avid gardener who held a keen interest in native California plant life. In 1965, he became one of the founding members of the California Native Plant Society
. A species of manzanita
was named after him to honor his contribution to the study and preservation of California's native flora: Arctostaphylos uva-ursi leo-breweri, also referred to as "Leo Brewer's Manzanita."
revised Gilbert N. Lewis
and Merle Randall
's classic 1923 text, Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances.
Brewer's early high-temperature work also showed that the equilibrium vapor above CuCl was mainly Cu3Cl3 molecules at normal pressures. This simple observation led to what became known as Brewer's Rule. He showed that when vapor and condensed phases are in equilibrium, the vapor species become more complex as the temperature is raised. This includes the formation of polymers and unusual oxidation states. His rule became the foundation of the field of high-temperature chemistry.
Much of his research focused on resolving discrepancies between reported experimental values and values predicted by chemical bonding models. In many instances, the reported data were shown to be in error, and the reliability of the model was confirmed. Examples are the demonstrations that the enthalpies of formation of C(g) and N(g) were much larger than the widely accepted values. Brewer's compilation of the thermodynamic properties and phase diagrams of 101 binary systems of molybdenum
provides many examples of use of predictive models when no reliable experimental data are available.
In some instances, the experimental results were confirmed and it was necessary to improve the models. An example would be the neglect of gaseous polymer species at high temperatures. The war-time study uncovered evidence of polymerization
in high-temperature vapors. This led to a general theory which predicted that saturated high-temperature vapors would be complex mixtures of species and that the complexity would increase with increasing temperature. These predictions have been confirmed by high-temperature workers for many systems. The refractory studies initiated with the sulfides were extended to studies of silicides and borides and other refractory phases. The experience on the Manhattan Project on the use of platinum to reduce the volatility of lanthanides and actinides were extended to a wide range of transition metal intermetallic compounds through use of the Engel correlation of electronic and crystal structures that has led to the prediction of the structures and compositions of the phases of most of the two billion multi-component phase diagrams of the transition metals.
Brewer devoted major effort to the characterization of the thermodynamic properties at high temperatures, and the critical evaluations of the thermodynamic properties from the Manhattan Project were updated periodically. One of Brewer's compilations covered the thermodynamic properties of the solid, liquid and gaseous phases of the elements and their oxides between room temperature and temperature to above 3000 K. The thermodynamic applications of these data were well-illustrated by the 2nd edition of Lewis and Randall's Thermodynamics, which Brewer and Kenneth Pitzer revised in 1961. Brewer's global interest in all of the elements is illustrated by a paper in 1951 on the equilibrium distribution of the elements in the Earth's gravitational field.
Brewer conducted a wide range of spectroscopic studies both at high temperatures and in matrices to fix the thermodynamic properties of high-temperature vapors. From 1950 to 1970, Brewer published many papers on the analysis of the spectra produced by high-temperature gaseous molecules. Several of these papers described a molecular beam method for determining their ground electronic states. When low temperature matrix isolation was developed by George Pimentel at UC Berkeley, Brewer produced many papers on the spectra of his high-temperature molecules in a frozen inert matrix. Brewer also had a long-term interest in the electronic states of I2, and he had several papers on its remarkable complexities.
Much of Brewer's later research was aimed at characterizing the extremely strong generalized Lewis acid-base interactions between lanthanides, actinides and left-hand transition metals with the platinum group metals. A combination of high-temperature solid electrolyte cells, equilibration with oxides, carbides and nitrides, and vapor pressure measurements were used. These intermetallics were shown to be among the most stable of all types of compounds, as predicted by the Engel theory. Engel had suggested a correlation between the number of conduction electrons and the crystal structure of the metals. Brewer extended this concept to include the nature of d and f electrons, and the concept of acid-base interactions. Starting investigations with undergraduate students, he tested these ideas by heating ZrC with the noble metal platinum, and found that the formation of ZrPt3 released a great deal of energy despite the great stability of ZrC. Over several years Brewer developed the Brewer-Engel theory for such bonds, and he published many papers about its application.
(1953), the E. O. Lawrence Award of the Atomic Energy Commission
(1961), the Palladium Medal of the Electrochemical Society (1971)., and the William Hume-Rothery Award of the Metallurgical Society of the American Institute of Mining (1983). Brewer also served as a Guggenheim Fellow (1950) and as an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences
(1959), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
(1979), and the American Society for Metals. In 1984, a special festschrift in his honor was prepared by his former students and colleagues, published under the title Modern High Temperature Science.
Partially adapted from an autobiographical essay written by Leo Brewer, as well as biographical essays prepared by his colleagues and students, including Paul Gilles, Karen Kruschwitz, Rollie Myers, Gerd Rosenblatt, Herbert Strauss, Richard Brewer
, and Jane Scheiber.
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
and died 22 February 2005 in Lafayette, California
Lafayette, California
Lafayette is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 23,893. It was named after the Marquis de Lafayette, a French military hero of the American Revolutionary War...
, of the sequelae of Beryllium
Beryllium
Beryllium is the chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a divalent element which occurs naturally only in combination with other elements in minerals. Notable gemstones which contain beryllium include beryl and chrysoberyl...
poisoning from his work in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Brewer received his BS from the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
in 1940 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, in 1942. Brewer joined the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
following his graduate work, and joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
in 1946. Leo Brewer married Rose Sturgo (died 1989) in 1945. They had three children, Beth Gaydos, Roger Brewer, and Gail Brewer.
Early life and education
Brewer spent the first ten years of his life with his family in Youngstown, OhioYoungstown, Ohio
Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Mahoning County; it also extends into Trumbull County. The municipality is situated on the Mahoning River, approximately southeast of Cleveland and northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...
, where his father worked as a shoe repairman. In 1929, in the wake of the Great Depression, his family moved to Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. It was only six years later that Brewer decided to attend the California Institute of Technology. As an undergraduate at Caltech, Leo Brewer was strongly influenced by Professors E. Swift and D. Yost, and had his first taste of research studying equilibria and kinetics of olefin hydration under Professors D. Pressman and H. J. Lucas. After the B.S. in 1940, Professor Linus Pauling
Linus Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century...
persuaded him to pursue advanced instruction at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he continued kinetic studies under Professor Axel Olson. In the shadow of the United States' entrance into World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Brewer pursued his Ph.D. with steady determination, and completed his dissertation on the effect of electrolytes upon the kinetics of aqueous reactions in November 1942, after only 28 months.
Manhattan Project
Following his doctoral work, Brewer was immediately recruited by UC Berkeley professor Wendell Latimer to join the top-secret wartime research group that would become known as the Manhattan Engineering District Project. Assigned to work under Professor E.D. Eastman (whose deteriorating health forced him to withdraw from the project soon after work had begun), Brewer headed a group composed of Leroy Bromley, Paul Gilles and Norman Lofgren, assigned with the threefold task of predicting the possible high-temperature properties of the newly discovered element plutoniumPlutonium
Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation...
, then available only in trace amounts; developing refractory materials capable of containing molten plutonium without excessive contamination, even if the worst predictions should be true; and developing a micro-analytical procedure for the determination of oxygen.
The first of these tasks led to a fundamental examination of the behavior of all elements at high temperature, and resulted in a series of papers describing the high-temperature behavior of metals, oxides, halides, and many other compounds. The second task led to the development of the refractory sulfides of Caesium
Caesium
Caesium or cesium is the chemical element with the symbol Cs and atomic number 55. It is a soft, silvery-gold alkali metal with a melting point of 28 °C , which makes it one of only five elemental metals that are liquid at room temperature...
(Ce), Thorium
Thorium
Thorium is a natural radioactive chemical element with the symbol Th and atomic number 90. It was discovered in 1828 and named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder....
(Th), and Uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
(U). The third task led to development of a micro method of analysis of electropositive metals using a molten platinum bath.
The immediate result of the research was the creation of the new material Caesium Sulfide (CeS), from which they made several hundred crucibles for use at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
. Brewer's crucibles were ready when the plutonium became available.
Academic career
In 1946, following his service as a member of the Manhattan ProjectManhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
, Brewer was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
. He rose steadily through the ranks, achieving the rank of full professor in 1955. Brewer served as a faculty member of the Department of Chemistry for over sixty years, during which time he directed 41 Ph.D. candidates, and nearly two-dozen post-doctoral research associates.
In addition to his academic appointment, Brewer was associated with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
(formerly the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory) from 1943–1994, and served as Director of the Inorganic Materials Research Division of LBNL from its inception in 1961 until 1975.
Brewer's dual appointment afforded him the opportunity to take an active role in all levels of academic instruction, both inside and outside of the laboratory. Besides providing classroom instruction in solid-state chemistry, heterogeneous equilibria, and inorganic chemistry, Brewer also delivered lectures and supervised laboratory work for laboratory courses in freshman chemistry, advanced quantitative analysis, instrumental analysis, inorganic synthesis, inorganic reactions, and organic chemistry, as well as courses in chemical thermodynamics from the sophomore to graduate student level. In order to ensure a high standard of instruction at even the most basic levels, Brewer initiated a course for freshman-chemistry teaching assistants that reviewed principles and certified their ability to adequately fulfill their responsibilities.
Brewer was a caring and gifted teacher who was greatly admired by students and colleagues alike. In 1966 he was selected by the Academic Senate at UC Berkeley to deliver the annual Faculty Research Lecture. The title of his lecture was, "A Broad University Education Leads to Astrochemistry." In 1988, in recognition of his achievements as an educator, he received the Henry B. Linford Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Electrochemical Society. Upon his official retirement from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989, he was presented with the Berkeley Citation, and an academic symposium was held in his honor.
Professional Service
Brewer was instrumental in founding the National Academy of SciencesUnited States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
' National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
Committee on High-Temperature Chemistry, as well as organizing the first Gordon Research Conference
Gordon Research Conferences
Gordon Research Conferences are international scientific conferences organized by a non-profit organization of the same name. The conference topics cover frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies. The conferences have been held since...
on High-Temperature Chemistry in 1960. At the request of the Atomic Energy Commission
United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
and its successors, the Energy Research and Development Administration
Energy Research and Development Administration
The United States Energy Research and Development Administration was a United States government organization formed from the split of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1975...
, and the Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
, Brewer worked on numerous committees, including the DOE Council for Materials Sciences and the DOE Selection Committee for the Fermi Award.
He also maintained close ties with organizations that represented the international scientific community, including the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry is an international federation of National Adhering Organizations that represents chemists in individual countries. It is a member of the International Council for Science . The international headquarters of IUPAC is located in Zürich,...
, and the International Atomic Energy Agency
International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957...
.
Brewer sat on the editorial advisory boards of many respected scholarly journals and academic monograph series, including the Journal of Physical Chemistry Solids (1956–1992), Progress in Organic Chemistry (1958–1969), the Journal of Chemistry Physics (associate editor, 1959–1963), Progress in Inorganic Chemistry (1967–2005), Progress in Solid State Chemistry (1967–1996), High Temperature Science (founder, 1968–2005), the Journal of Chemistry Thermodynamics (1969–1978), the Journal of Solid State Chemistry (1969–1984), the Journal of the Electrochemical Society (divisional editor, 1976–1984), the Journal of Chemical Engineering Data, the Journal of Physical Chemistry Ref. Data (1978–1981, 1989–1992), the Metals Handbook (co-editor, 1983), the Princeton Series in the Physico-Chemical Sciences for Technology (co-editor, 1983–2005), and the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (1991).
In addition, Brewer single-handedly compiled and maintained Part II of the Bibliography on the High-Temperature Chemistry and Physics of Materials.
Besides his distinguished career as a chemist and educator, Brewer was also an avid gardener who held a keen interest in native California plant life. In 1965, he became one of the founding members of the California Native Plant Society
California Native Plant Society
The California Native Plant Society is a California not-for-profit organization that seeks to increase understanding of California's native flora and to preserve that flora. Its "paramount purpose is to preserve wild plants".-History:...
. A species of manzanita
Manzanita
Manzanita is a common name for many species of the genus Arctostaphylos. They are evergreen shrubs or small trees present in the chaparral biome of western North America, where they occur from southern British Columbia, Washington to California, Arizona and New Mexico in the United States, and...
was named after him to honor his contribution to the study and preservation of California's native flora: Arctostaphylos uva-ursi leo-breweri, also referred to as "Leo Brewer's Manzanita."
Writings
Outside of his editorial work, Brewer authored nearly 200 articles on a variety of advanced topics in the field of thermodynamics. In addition, in 1961, he and Kenneth PitzerKenneth Pitzer
Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer was an American physical and theoretical chemist, educator, and university president....
revised Gilbert N. Lewis
Gilbert N. Lewis
Gilbert Newton Lewis was an American physical chemist known for the discovery of the covalent bond , his purification of heavy water, his reformulation of chemical thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to ordinary chemists, his theory of Lewis acids and...
and Merle Randall
Merle Randall
Merle Randall was an American physical chemist famous for his work, over the period of 25 years, in measuring free energy calculations of compounds with Gilbert N. Lewis...
's classic 1923 text, Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances.
Research Focus
Although Brewer's research covered an unusually wide range of subjects and employed a multitude of techniques from theory to spectroscopy, his primary focus was on high-temperature thermodynamics, materials science (including refractory containment materials), studies of metallic phases, and the development of metallic bonding theory, incorporating the concepts of electron promotion and generalized acid-base theory. He was also involved at different points in his career with astrophysics and ceramics.Brewer's early high-temperature work also showed that the equilibrium vapor above CuCl was mainly Cu3Cl3 molecules at normal pressures. This simple observation led to what became known as Brewer's Rule. He showed that when vapor and condensed phases are in equilibrium, the vapor species become more complex as the temperature is raised. This includes the formation of polymers and unusual oxidation states. His rule became the foundation of the field of high-temperature chemistry.
Much of his research focused on resolving discrepancies between reported experimental values and values predicted by chemical bonding models. In many instances, the reported data were shown to be in error, and the reliability of the model was confirmed. Examples are the demonstrations that the enthalpies of formation of C(g) and N(g) were much larger than the widely accepted values. Brewer's compilation of the thermodynamic properties and phase diagrams of 101 binary systems of molybdenum
Molybdenum
Molybdenum , is a Group 6 chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The name is from Neo-Latin Molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek , meaning lead, itself proposed as a loanword from Anatolian Luvian and Lydian languages, since its ores were confused with lead ores...
provides many examples of use of predictive models when no reliable experimental data are available.
In some instances, the experimental results were confirmed and it was necessary to improve the models. An example would be the neglect of gaseous polymer species at high temperatures. The war-time study uncovered evidence of polymerization
Polymerization
In polymer chemistry, polymerization is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form three-dimensional networks or polymer chains...
in high-temperature vapors. This led to a general theory which predicted that saturated high-temperature vapors would be complex mixtures of species and that the complexity would increase with increasing temperature. These predictions have been confirmed by high-temperature workers for many systems. The refractory studies initiated with the sulfides were extended to studies of silicides and borides and other refractory phases. The experience on the Manhattan Project on the use of platinum to reduce the volatility of lanthanides and actinides were extended to a wide range of transition metal intermetallic compounds through use of the Engel correlation of electronic and crystal structures that has led to the prediction of the structures and compositions of the phases of most of the two billion multi-component phase diagrams of the transition metals.
Brewer devoted major effort to the characterization of the thermodynamic properties at high temperatures, and the critical evaluations of the thermodynamic properties from the Manhattan Project were updated periodically. One of Brewer's compilations covered the thermodynamic properties of the solid, liquid and gaseous phases of the elements and their oxides between room temperature and temperature to above 3000 K. The thermodynamic applications of these data were well-illustrated by the 2nd edition of Lewis and Randall's Thermodynamics, which Brewer and Kenneth Pitzer revised in 1961. Brewer's global interest in all of the elements is illustrated by a paper in 1951 on the equilibrium distribution of the elements in the Earth's gravitational field.
Brewer conducted a wide range of spectroscopic studies both at high temperatures and in matrices to fix the thermodynamic properties of high-temperature vapors. From 1950 to 1970, Brewer published many papers on the analysis of the spectra produced by high-temperature gaseous molecules. Several of these papers described a molecular beam method for determining their ground electronic states. When low temperature matrix isolation was developed by George Pimentel at UC Berkeley, Brewer produced many papers on the spectra of his high-temperature molecules in a frozen inert matrix. Brewer also had a long-term interest in the electronic states of I2, and he had several papers on its remarkable complexities.
Much of Brewer's later research was aimed at characterizing the extremely strong generalized Lewis acid-base interactions between lanthanides, actinides and left-hand transition metals with the platinum group metals. A combination of high-temperature solid electrolyte cells, equilibration with oxides, carbides and nitrides, and vapor pressure measurements were used. These intermetallics were shown to be among the most stable of all types of compounds, as predicted by the Engel theory. Engel had suggested a correlation between the number of conduction electrons and the crystal structure of the metals. Brewer extended this concept to include the nature of d and f electrons, and the concept of acid-base interactions. Starting investigations with undergraduate students, he tested these ideas by heating ZrC with the noble metal platinum, and found that the formation of ZrPt3 released a great deal of energy despite the great stability of ZrC. Over several years Brewer developed the Brewer-Engel theory for such bonds, and he published many papers about its application.
Awards Received
Brewer's professional achievements were recognized with many awards and honors, including the L.H. Baekeland Award of the American Chemical SocietyAmerican Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 161,000 members at all degree-levels and in all fields of chemistry, chemical...
(1953), the E. O. Lawrence Award of the Atomic Energy Commission
United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
(1961), the Palladium Medal of the Electrochemical Society (1971)., and the William Hume-Rothery Award of the Metallurgical Society of the American Institute of Mining (1983). Brewer also served as a Guggenheim Fellow (1950) and as an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
(1959), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
(1979), and the American Society for Metals. In 1984, a special festschrift in his honor was prepared by his former students and colleagues, published under the title Modern High Temperature Science.
Partially adapted from an autobiographical essay written by Leo Brewer, as well as biographical essays prepared by his colleagues and students, including Paul Gilles, Karen Kruschwitz, Rollie Myers, Gerd Rosenblatt, Herbert Strauss, Richard Brewer
Richard Brewer
Richard M. "Dick" Brewer , was an American cowboy and outlaw. He was the first leader of what historically is referred to as Billy the Kid's band, although Billy never led them.-Early life:...
, and Jane Scheiber.