In thermodynamics, Merle Randall (1888-1950) was an American physical chemist notable for his work, beginning in 1909, with American physical chemist Gilbert Lewis in the calculation of free energies of chemical substances, founding of the Lewis school of thermodynamics, and for their co-publication, in which Randall functioned as the dictation taking assistant, of the 1923 founding chemical thermodynamics textbook Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances. [1]
Education
Randall graduated from the University of Missouri with a BA in 1907 and an MA in 1909. In the fall of 1909, Randall went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he began his long association with American physical chemist Gilbert Lewis, a professor there at the time. Randall received his PhD titled “Studies in Free Energy” in 1912. [3]
That same year, Lewis brought Randall with him, as a research assistant, to found the soon-to-be famed “Lewis school of thermodynamics”, as the head of the department of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. [4] The following year, Randall's title was changed to research associate in 1913, and in 1917 Randall became a member of the teaching staff with the rank of assistant professor. Promotion to associate professor came in 1922 and to a full professorship in 1927.
For many years, Randall’s major interest was in thermodynamics, where he was active in the determinations of the free energies of various compounds and in the study of the activity coefficients of various electrolytes. Throughout his career Randall was active as a researcher who published over one hundred papers in various scientific periodicals, as well as the 1942 Elementary Physical Chemistry. [5]
Praise | Tributes
The following are noted quotes of praise:
“Lewis, Randall and Guggenheim must be considered as the founders of modern chemical thermodynamics because of the major contributions of these two books in unifying the applications of thermodynamics to chemistry.”
— Bevan Ott and Juliana Boerio-Goates (2000), Chemical Thermodynamics [2]
References
1. Lewis, Gilbert and Randall, Merle. (1923). Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances. McGraw-Hill.
2. Boerio-Goates, Juliana, and Ott, J., Bevan. (2000). Chemical Thermodynamics: Principles and Applications. Elsevier Academic Press.
3. Randall, Merle. (1912). “Studies in Free Energy”, PhD thesis, 12-pages, MIT, Department of Chemistry.
4. Merle Randall, Chemistry: Berkeley – University of California: In Memoriam, 1950.
5. Randall, Merle and Young, Leona E. (1942). Elementary Physical Chemistry. Randall and Sons.
External links
● Merle Randall – Wikipedia.
