William Giauque

William Giauque was a Canadian-American chemist who pioneered low-temperature research. His studies of matter near absolute zero earned him the 1949 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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Magnetic cooling: A cooling method that lowers a material’s temperature by changing its magnetization under controlled conditions. Giauque developed magnetic cooling to reach temperatures below those attainable with conventional refrigeration.
University of California, Berkeley: A public research university in Berkeley, California, and the institution where Giauque conducted much of his scientific career. Giauque joined Berkeley’s chemistry faculty and built his low-temperature research there.
Third-law entropy measurements: Experimental determinations of absolute entropies using thermodynamic data and the third law. Giauque used low-temperature measurements to establish entropies for substances from their heat capacities.
Ernest O. Lawrence: An American physicist who invented the cyclotron and directed the University of California Radiation Laboratory. Lawrence’s Berkeley-era work overlapped with the institution where Giauque pursued his research.
Helium liquefaction: The process of cooling helium gas until it becomes a liquid. Liquid helium refrigeration provided another route to low temperatures, distinct from magnetic demagnetization.
Adiabatic demagnetization: A refrigeration process in which an isolated paramagnetic material cools as an applied magnetic field is reduced. This technique became Giauque’s key method for producing temperatures near absolute zero.
Gilbert N. Lewis: An American physical chemist known for contributions to chemical bonding, thermodynamics, and the electron-pair theory of acids and bases. Lewis supervised Giauque’s doctoral work and supported his early thermodynamic research.
Heat capacity: The amount of heat required to raise a substance’s temperature by a specified amount. Measurements at low temperatures helped Giauque determine thermodynamic properties and entropies.
Peter Debye: A Dutch-American physical chemist who developed theories of molecular structure, heat capacity, and diffraction. Debye’s theory of low-temperature heat capacity informed the thermodynamic setting of Giauque’s research.
Evaporative cooling: Cooling caused when higher-energy particles escape from a liquid or other system. Giauque’s method lowered temperature through magnetic entropy changes rather than evaporation.