Talk:Henry Moseley

Untitled
According to Modern Physics by Tipler & Llewellyn, Moseley predicted three elements: Z = 43, 61 and 75. If this is true, the wikipedia article is misleading, almost lying.
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 * Yeah, but I still can't know if Tipler is right. In order to increase the probability of a correct article, a little more research should be done. Or what to you think?

According to, he predicted three (which seems to be using the Heilbron book as a source, which is authoritative if true). This says it was four elements but doesn't give a citation. If the Heilbron book says three, then I'd say it is probably three... --Fastfission 18:19, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In his original articles, which I have added a link to on the page, Moseley stated that there were three, and only three, gaps in the periodic table (as then known) between aluminum and gold. Mendeleev had previously predicted the existence and properties of technetium, and Bohuslav Brauner had predicted the existence of promethium, so Moseley confirmed their predictions, made one other prediction, and showed that there were no additional gaps in the elements up through gold. --Chuck Y 19 Aug 2005


 * I have the 1966 Heilbron article, which says 4 elements. But wups, there is also Moseley's paper with the updated chart and list of elements, at the end: . In the chart, Moseley clearly predicts 43 (Tc), 61 (Pm), and 75 (Re), just as he says in his text, but he doesn't clearly predict 72 (Hf). What happens instead, is there's some mixup in the 4 elements 69-72, which Moseley gets all wrong. His sequence for these is Tm I, Tm II, Yb, Lu (that is, he calls for two "thuliums" Tm I and II as being a mixture of two substances, not one), and then Yb and Lu. He doesn't clearly indicate this means that two thuliums (two separate substances as he says) means there's only one thulium plus one yet-unnamed element in this pack, even according to his own chart and data. So that is the last implied gap thus for an unnamed element, but he doesn't know where it should go. Probably he would have put it in one of those thulium slots, as 69 or 70. In fact, the correct order here, from 69-72 is Tm, Yb, Lu, and THEN the yet-undiscovered element 72, Hf. I'll re-read Heilbron to see if Moseley had this sorted out, before he died. But in the meantime, that's how it stands from what I can see in his paper. As it stands, it's Mosely's data that imply 4 undiscovered elements between aluminum and gold, even while the author interprets it only calling clearly for 3. S  B Harris 05:33, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Citation Tag
All the info for this article is taken from the Heilbron article and book, and from the two chem bios referenced. It would be somewhat tedious to go through the entire article and insert page numbers from these, for every statement. That's not really Wikipedia standard. Opinions as to what to do when a Wiki is a condensatin of a few sources, but these are very authoritative ones? And few others exist? S B Harris 00:01, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I suggest removing the template. If the article is already based on an authoritative biography, there is no point. Adding the page number at the end of each statement would be annoying. --Itub 18:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Isaac Asimov quote
The following was added today: After the War Isaac Asimov wrote "In view of what he might have accomplished, his death might well have been the most costly single death of the war to mankind".

This needs a source, not only to verify the quote (it does sound like Asimov), but more importantly to indicate when he really said or wrote it. He certainly did not say it just after the First World War in which Moseley died, since that war ended in 1918 and Isaac Asimov was born in 1920. Dirac66 (talk) 01:16, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Google Books is very useful for checking quotes. This one is found in Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. However, Google Books only shows a tiny snippet without enough context to verify properly. If anyone can look up the book, it would be great. Anyway, the way the quote was added makes it look like Asimov commented on Moseley's death soon after the war, rather than decades later, and that needs to be fixed. --Itub (talk) 12:26, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Very good. Your site also indicates the book date as 1972 and the page as 624. I also typed the entire quote into Google and found this site which indicates that the whole quote (plus the word "generally" at the end) does come from this book. I suggest we restore the sentence, minus "After the War" plus your link with the date indicated in the footnote. Dirac66 (talk) 23:39, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It took me a few weeks to track down the above, but I finally did. The quotation has been added.  The sentences that mention speculations need references. - Astrochemist (talk) 18:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Moseley pictures
I removed the comment (added 2 years ago) underneath the picture at the top of Henry Moseley's article. The comment gives an impression of uniqueness that may not be warranted. A picture of Moseley sitting with a group of Manchester physicists is in Jaffe's book (Plate 2). Also, the Edgar Fahs Smith collection has two other Moseley pictures. - Astrochemist (talk) 18:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

First experimental evidence for Bohr model??
Re today's change of "independent" evidence for Bohr model to "first experimental" evidence: First-year chemistry books present the Bohr model as an attempt to explain the spectrum of the hydrogen atom in the visible (Balmer series), uv and near IR. Since this spectrum was observed in the late 19th century, it would seem to be the "first experimental" evidence without which Bohr would not have developed his model. Moseley's observations were therefore independent supporting evidence, as was the Franck-Hertz experiment. --Dirac66 (11:21 14 May 2010)


 * Feel free to change it back. Remember we're not talking about Rutherford's model of the nucleus, for which the evidence was provided by the Geiger-Marsden experiment. I think of Moseley's as the first experimental evidence for Bohr's model of electrons and spectra, because all Bohr theory itself is "retrodictive." It's all post-hoc, ad-hoc theory to "explain" results already known for just one case: hydrogen. Experimental data isn't really "evidence" in favor of a model, when the theory/model has been "constructed" to explain that very same data in the first place! An infinite number of theories can do that. And I will note that scientsts at the time didn't take the Bohr's math as being any serious explanation of the Rydberg law for hydrogen, either, due to the very same post-hoc nature of his reasoning and his judging. Bohr's idea had free parameters, and assumptions which had no justification at the time. Why SHOULD L be quantized in units of h/2pi??-- there's no good reason for it. Why SHOULD the orbital frequences not be the same as the radiation frequences? That makes no physical/clasical sense. It wasn't until the same equation gave good results for the Z^2 dependence in the K lines of a number of OTHER atoms, that it was taken seriously, as Bohr says. Nor should it have been taken seriously, quite frankly, at least IMHO.  S  B Harris 18:50, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I have left "first experimental evidence", but added "aside from the H spectrum which the Bohr theory was designed to reproduce" to put it into perspective. Dirac66 (talk) 22:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

X-ray crystallography
This was a pioneering use of the method of X-ray crystallography in physics. Is this right? I thought he only used chracteristic x-rays to get to his conclusions and not the diffraction patterns. --Stone (talk) 22:44, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, he used diffraction patterns, or at least Bragg's law, to determine the x-ray wavelengths. I think with a simple crystal (NaCl?) whose lattice constant was determined independently from the density. Dirac66 (talk) 23:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * is good for the description. They use a crystall for the refraction of the x-rays and with the Bragg law he could get the wavelength. So he did not do X-ray crystallography, but he used the laws and the data from that method for his problem.--Stone (talk) 09:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, crystallography is really the determination of crystal structure which he did not do.

Shall we change the sentence you have quoted to read "This was a pioneering application of Bragg's X-ray diffraction law, which was used to determine the X-ray wavelengths."? Dirac66 (talk) 18:07, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Graduate School? - ouch
This is both an anachronism (that a historian would be aware of), as there was little formal study beyond the first degree in Great Britain at this time and certainly no PhD programs. Moreover "graduate school" is an Americanism, that has not yet been adopted this side of the pond. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.27.193.180 (talk) 07:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I have replaced this by the term "demonstrator" which appears in the bio posted by the Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility. Note that Frederick Soddy is also described as a demonstrator in 1900 at McGill University. Dirac66 (talk) 14:19, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 17:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Henry Moseley medal
The Institute of Physics has a medal in the name of Henry Moseley (see ). Worth including? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.173.208.86 (talk) 17:21, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

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Claims about British government changing eligibility for joining military
This claim is repeated but the references link to Chemistry textbooks with zero information on this matter. Please add a source or do not revert the page to include inaccurate information. Guenonposter (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:20, 13 February 2020 (UTC)