Future Nobel Laureate Nobly Lauds Esperanto

And this is the device that
I've labeled in Esperanto.

In 1904, the British chemist, Sir William Ramsay, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the noble gases (note spelling). To stray far from my area of expertise, the noble gases are those that do not (typically) react with other elements. More than sixty years would elapse between Ramsay’s 1898 discovery of xenon and the 1962 creation of a xenon compound. The first noble gas discovered by Ramsay, however, was argon in 1895, when the Nobel Prizes were still five years in the future.

In addition to being the chemist who discovered argon, neon, krypton, and xenon, Sir William Ramsay was an early British Esperantist, and a member of the British Esperanto Association, which is one thing that doesn’t get mentioned on Wikipedia, although his association with Esperanto and the Internacia Scienca Asocio Esperantista is mentioned on Esperanto Wikipedia. Ramsay wrote a piece on radium which appeared in the British Esperanto magazine, The Esperantist.

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Chemists and Esperanto

Did Ramsay ever speak to
Ostwald in Esperanto?

A short item in the Aberdeen Herald of Aberdeen, Washington (not Scotland) makes a connection between Esperanto and chemistry.[1] Some of the early advocates of Esperanto were prominent chemists, including Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, whose advocacy of Esperanto helped establish a group at Harvard University. Ostwald even funded a prize for composition in Esperanto, although ironically, soon after it was given for the first time, he left the Esperanto movement and became an equally fervent supporter of Ido.[2]

But another prominent early-twentieth-century chemist remained in the Esperanto movement, Sir William Ramsey. Like Ostwald, Ramsey became an Esperantist before he became a Nobel laureate (but unlike Ostwald, was still an Esperantist at the time he received the medal). Ramsay was the first Esperantist to win a Nobel, but not the last.

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You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

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