Alfred Ubbelohde

Background

Ubbelohde was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1907.

Education

He was educated at Street Paul"s School, 1920-1926 and at Christ Church, Oxford, 1926-1930.

Career

He was senior scholar of Christ Church from 1931-1933. He then became a senior researcher in the Department of Thermodynamics at Oxford, 1933-1935. This was followed by excursions as a Dewar Fellow of the Royal Institution, London, 1936-1940 as Principal Experimental Officer at the Ministry of Supply, 1940-1945 and as Professor of Chemistry at Queen"s University, Belfast, 1945-1954.

He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1951.

In 1954, Ubbelohde became a professor of thermodynamics at Imperial College London, a position he held until 1975. In 1961 he was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

From 1961 to 1975 he was the head of the Chemical Engineering Department at Imperial College. Following this he was a senior research fellow at Imperial College from 1975-1988.

Ubbelohde"s research interests included chemical thermodynamics, combustion, explosions and detonations, ionic melts, graphite and intercalation compounds.

His group was the first to synthesise highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG). Over the course of his career, Ubbelohde wrote six books and some 400 publications. Ubbelohde was the chair of the Solvay Conferences on Chemistry (London), from 1959 to 1980.

The Ubbelohde effect, which is the observation that dueteration increases hydrogen bond length, is named after him.

He is also credited with coining the term proton conductor. He also is known for studying life from a thermodynamic perspective, and for his eccentric study of the thermodynamics of pigs.

In 1960 he bought a pig farm where he raised over 100 pigs and studied them from a thermodynamic perspective. He authored numerous books on chemistry during his career.

Achievements

• Ubbelohde was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (Federal Reserve System) in 1951.

Membership

Royal Society.