Nobel Gases: Lighting Up Lives in National Geographic
Photograph by Justin Guariglia, National Geographic
October 5, 2011 - Washington, D.C.
From National Geographic.
by Ker Than
Lighted by electrified gases such as neon, many of the brilliant extravagances of Shanghai (pictured) wouldn't be possible without Sir William Ramsay. The Scotsman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 for identifying four previously unknown elements in air, later dubbed the noble gases: argon, neon, krypton, and xenon...
In addition to lighting up our lives, Ramsay's discovery of an entirely new group of elements "confirmed the structure of the periodic table," the Chemical Heritage Foundation's Tritton said, "which is foundational to all of modern chemistry."
Link to National Geographic