William Francis Giauque was a pioneering physical chemist born on May 12, 1895, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, to American parents. He received his B.S. with highest honors in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1920 and completed his Ph.D. in chemistry with a minor in physics in 1922. Giauque joined the faculty of UC Berkeley as an Instructor of Chemistry in 1922, steadily advancing to become a full Professor of Chemistry in 1934. He spent his entire academic career at Berkeley, remaining active as an Emeritus Professor until his death on March 28, 1982, in Berkeley, California, having established himself as a central figure in the Lewis school of thermodynamics.
Giauque's groundbreaking research fundamentally advanced the understanding of thermodynamics at extremely low temperatures, most notably through his experimental verification of the third law of thermodynamics. In 1933, he achieved temperatures below minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit using his innovative magnetic refrigeration system, a breakthrough that had been considered impossible by many scientists. His invention of the adiabatic demagnetization technique enabled researchers to reach temperatures considerably below 1 Kelvin, opening new frontiers in low-temperature physics. Additionally, his correlated investigations of oxygen's entropy led to the discovery of oxygen isotopes 17 and 18 in Earth's atmosphere, resolving discrepancies between chemists' and physicists' atomic weight scales.
For these seminal contributions to chemical thermodynamics, Giauque was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1949, specifically cited for his work on the behavior of matter at extremely low temperatures. His research had profound practical applications, contributing to stronger steel, improved gasoline formulations, and more efficient industrial processes across numerous sectors. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1936, Giauque's legacy endures through his definitive experimental approach that established thermophysical properties with exceptional precision. His work laid essential foundations for modern cryogenics and continues to influence research in materials science, quantum computing, and fundamental physics exploring the behavior of matter near absolute zero.
