Martin Lowry
Encyclopedia
Thomas Martin Lowry CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 FRS (26 October 1874 – 2 November 1936) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 physical chemist
Physical chemistry
Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic, atomic, subatomic, and particulate phenomena in chemical systems in terms of physical laws and concepts...

. Independently from Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted
Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted
Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted born in Varde was a Danish physical chemist.He received a degree in chemical engineering in 1899 and his Ph. D. in 1908 from the University of Copenhagen. He was immediately appointed professor of inorganic and physical chemistry at Copenhagen.In 1906 he published his...

 he has developed the Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory and was as a founder-member and president (1928–1930) of the Faraday Society
Faraday Society
The Faraday Society was a British society for the study of physical chemistry, founded in 1903 and named in honour of Michael Faraday. It merged with several similar organisations in 1980 to form the Royal Society of Chemistry...

.

Biography

Lowry was born in Low Moor, Bradford
Low Moor, Bradford
Low Moor is a village in the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England.- History :Before 1790 Low Moor was nothing but a hamlet where a small number of cottages housed a few handloom weavers who sold their produce in places like the Halifax Piece Hall...

, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

, England, in a Cornish
Cornish people
The Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...

 family. He was the second son of the Reverend E. P. Lowry. He was educated at Kingswood School
Kingswood School
Kingswood School, referred to as 'Kingswood', is an independent day and boarding school located in Bath, Somerset, England. The school is coeducational and educates some 950 children aged 3 to 18. It is notable for being founded by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, in 1748...

, Bath, Somerset, and then at the Central Technical College in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....

. During those years he realized that he wanted to be a chemist. He studied chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

 under Henry Edward Armstrong
Henry Edward Armstrong
Henry Edward Armstrong FRS was an English chemist. Although Armstrong was active in many areas of scientific research, such as the chemistry of naphthalene derivatives, he is remembered today largely for his ideas and work on the teaching of science...

, an English chemist whose interests were primarily in organic chemistry
Organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation of carbon-based compounds, hydrocarbons, and their derivatives...

 but also included the nature of ion
Ion
An ion is an atom or molecule in which the total number of electrons is not equal to the total number of protons, giving it a net positive or negative electrical charge. The name was given by physicist Michael Faraday for the substances that allow a current to pass between electrodes in a...

s in aqueous
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

 solution
Solution
In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture composed of only one phase. In such a mixture, a solute is dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. The solvent does the dissolving.- Types of solutions :...

s. From 1896 to 1913 Lowry was assistant to Armstrong, and between 1904 and 1913 worked as Lecturer in Chemistry at the Westminster Training College. In 1913, he was appointed head of the chemical department in Guy’s Hospital Medical and became the first teacher of chemistry in a Medical School to be made a University Professor, at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

. From 1920 till his death, Lowry served as the Chair of Physical
Chemistry at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

. He married a daughter of the Rev. C. Wood in 1904 and was survived by his widow, two sons and a daughter.

Since the establishment of the Faraday Society in 1903, Lowry had been its active member and served as its President between 1928 and 1930. In 1914 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

. During and after the World War I, Lowry acted as Director of Shell-filling (1917–1919) and worked for the Trench Warfare Committee, Chemical Warfare Committee and Ordnance Committee. For this service, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 and the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus
Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus
The Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus is an order of chivalry awarded by the House of Savoy, the heads of which were formerly Kings of Italy...

.

Research

In 1898, Lowry noted the change in optical rotation
Optical rotation
Optical rotation is the turning of the plane of linearly polarized light about the direction of motion as the light travels through certain materials. It occurs in solutions of chiral molecules such as sucrose , solids with rotated crystal planes such as quartz, and spin-polarized gases of atoms...

 on nitro-d-camphor with time and invented the term mutarotational to describe this phenomenon. He studied changes in optical rotation
Optical rotation
Optical rotation is the turning of the plane of linearly polarized light about the direction of motion as the light travels through certain materials. It occurs in solutions of chiral molecules such as sucrose , solids with rotated crystal planes such as quartz, and spin-polarized gases of atoms...

 caused by acid
Acid
An acid is a substance which reacts with a base. Commonly, acids can be identified as tasting sour, reacting with metals such as calcium, and bases like sodium carbonate. Aqueous acids have a pH of less than 7, where an acid of lower pH is typically stronger, and turn blue litmus paper red...

- and base
Base (chemistry)
For the term in genetics, see base A base in chemistry is a substance that can accept hydrogen ions or more generally, donate electron pairs. A soluble base is referred to as an alkali if it contains and releases hydroxide ions quantitatively...

-catalyzed
Catalysis
Catalysis is the change in rate of a chemical reaction due to the participation of a substance called a catalyst. Unlike other reagents that participate in the chemical reaction, a catalyst is not consumed by the reaction itself. A catalyst may participate in multiple chemical transformations....

 reactions of camphor
Camphor
Camphor is a waxy, white or transparent solid with a strong, aromatic odor. It is a terpenoid with the chemical formula C10H16O. It is found in wood of the camphor laurel , a large evergreen tree found in Asia and also of Dryobalanops aromatica, a giant of the Bornean forests...

 derivatives. This led in 1923 to his formulation of the protonic definition of acids and bases, now known as Brønsted–Lowry acid-base theory, independently of the work by Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted
Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted
Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted born in Varde was a Danish physical chemist.He received a degree in chemical engineering in 1899 and his Ph. D. in 1908 from the University of Copenhagen. He was immediately appointed professor of inorganic and physical chemistry at Copenhagen.In 1906 he published his...

. Lowry published a few hundred papers and several books. His 1935 monograph on "Optical Rotatory Power" (1935) has long been regarded as a standard work on the subject.
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