Neil Bartlett Research Paper

Biography of Alfred Bartlett
Neil Bartlett was born September 15, 1932 as an English-born American chemist. He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His father was a World War I veteran who had worked as a shipwright; he has four generations of his Scottish ancestors. His mother was Anne Vock Bartlett. His family owned a grocery store. Neil Bartlett was one of three children and he recalls his childhood happily. He has an older brother named Ken. One of his earliest, formative memories was of a laboratory experiment he conducted in a grammar school class as 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."
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 eventually earned him a scholarship for his undergraduate education. In 1958 he went to the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, where he made a startling discovery. In 1966 he went to the United States, first being affiliated with Princeton University, where he held a chair in conjunction with a position at Bell Laboratories. He stayed on the UBC faculty until 1966. In 1969 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in conjunction with a position at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The historical and political situation during his time was the Great Depression and the aftermath of it. Neil Bartlett was alive during the Great Depression. He discovered and characterized many new fluorine compounds and also produced many new metallic graphite compounds, including some that show promise as powerful battery
materials.
His contribution to chemistry was he in 1962 he prepared the first noble gas compound, xenon hexafluoroplatinate, Xe+[PtF6]-. This contradicted all ideas chemists had of the nature of valiancy, as it was assumed that xenon, like all noble gases, was totally inert to chemical combination. (This had been explained by such theoretical treatments as Gilbert N. Lewis' octet rule.) He subsequently produced several other compounds of xenon: XeF2, XeF4, and XeF6...
In 1973 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (United Kingdom). In 1979 he was honored as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (U. S. A.). He has also received many other awards and honorary degrees. He was awarded the Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize of the Chemical Society, London. In 1965 he received both the Research Corporation Prize and the Steacie Prize in Natural Sciences (with John C. Polanyi). Bartlett received the Dannie-Heinemann Prize from Göttingen Academy in Germany in 1971, and in 1976, the Robert A. Welch Award. In 1988 he received the Prix Moissan (with George Cady) in Paris, and in 1992 was recognized with the Bonner Chemiepreis from Friedrich-Wilhelm's University of Bonn, Germ He retired from the Berkeley faculty in 1993 and from the Lawrence Laboratory in 1999
Neil Bartlett is still alive today. He is 75 years old. Neil Bartlett is still making changes in chemistry today.

Neil Bartlett from World of Chemistry. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.