Neil bartlett chemist biography

Neil Bartlett (15 September 1932 – 5 August 2008) was a.
Neil Bartlett was born on 15 September 1932 at The Gables, Elswick Road, formerly a branch of the Princess Mary but by then an independent maternity hospital.
A renowned emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, whose groundbreaking experiments challenged the prevailing views of the.

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Neil Bartlett and the Reactive Noble Gases

Biography of Neil Bartlett (1932-2008)

Neil Bartlett was born September 15, 1932 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom. One of his earliest, formative memories was of a laboratory experiment he conducted in a grammar school class as a twelve year old. In the experiment, he mixed a solution of aqueous ammonia (colorless) with copper sulfate (blue) in water, causing a reaction which would eventually produce "beautiful, well-formed crystals." From that moment "I was hooked," writes Bartlett, who yearned to know why the transformation took place.³ He could not have known that the event would vaguely foreshadow his famous experiment decades later in which he produced the world's first noble gas compound following a similarly stunning chemical reaction.

He began to immerse himself in chemistry to the extent that he built his own makeshift laboratory in his parent's home, complete with flasks and beakers and chemicals he purchased at a local supply store. That curiosity carried over into academic success and eventua

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Neil Bartlett (chemist)

British chemist (1932–2008)

Neil Bartlett (15 September 1932 – 5 August 2008) was a British chemist who specialized in fluorine and compounds containing fluorine, and became famous for creating the first noble gas compounds. He taught chemistry at the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Berkeley.

Biography

Neil Bartlett was born on 15 September 1932 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.^[1] Bartlett's interest in chemistry dated back to an experiment at Heaton Grammar School when he was only eleven years old, in which he prepared "beautiful, well-formed" crystals by reaction of aqueous ammonia with copper sulfate.^[2] He explored chemistry by constructing a makeshift lab in his parents' home using chemicals and glassware he purchased from a local supply store. He went on to attend King's College, University of Durham (which went on to become Newcastle University^[3]) in the United Kingdom where he obtained a Bachelor of Science (1954) and then a doctorate (1958)^[4] in the inorgani

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Neil Bartlett

EXPERIMENT

On the evening of March 23, 1962, Neil Bartlett, working alone in the Chemistry Department at UBC, changed the face of chemistry. Until that day all chemistry textbooks were written with the fixed idea that the Group VIII elements He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, and Rn, the Rare Gases, were chemically inert. In fact, they were often referred to as the Inert Gases. That led to the concept that atoms interact to achieve the ‘desirable’ state of a filled electron shell. In other words our discussion of valence was tied into the inertness of the filled electron shells of the Inert Gases.

Bartlett had previously shown that oxygen gas could be oxidized by platinum hexafluoride to afford O₂PtF₆ and had come to the realization that the “inertness” of the Rare Gases might be a result of the reagents employed rather than a law of nature. Consequently he mixed xenon gas with platinum hexafluoride and obtained a solid that had the formula XePtF₆. This was formulated as a salt of Xe⁺ and PtF₆^– and the octet rule was no longer inviolable. The a