William F. Giauque
1895–1982 · United States · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1949
American chemist who pioneered magnetic cooling to reach temperatures near absolute zero and experimentally confirmed the third law of thermodynamics.
Nobel Prize work
Giauque invented adiabatic demagnetisation, using the entropy change when a paramagnetic salt is demagnetised to cool matter to within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero. His painstaking calorimetry at extremely low temperatures verified the third law of thermodynamics and measured entropy with unprecedented precision.
Fields
Related topics
Enthalpy, entropy, Gibbs free energy
Combines enthalpy and entropy through Gibbs energy to predict the thermodynamically allowed direction at fixed temperature and pressure.
High pressure, extremely low and high temperatures
How pressure and temperature reshape chemical bonding, phases, and reaction pathways in matter under extreme conditions.