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Ronald G. W. Norrish
1897–1978 · United Kingdom · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1967
British physical chemist whose flash photolysis made the fleeting intermediates of very fast reactions directly observable.
Nobel Prize work
With George Porter he invented flash photolysis, disturbing chemical equilibria with intense microsecond light pulses and following the transient species spectroscopically. The technique opened direct observation of free radicals and reactions too fast for classical methods.
Fields
Related topics
Reaction rate, reaction order
Measuring how fast concentrations change, and how the empirical order of a reaction is read from its concentration–time behaviour.
Femtosecond spectroscopy, attosecond chemistry
How ultrashort laser pulses reveal molecular motion on femtosecond scales and electron dynamics on attosecond scales.