Edward A. Guggenheim
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Through Thermodynamics and World War II
Life
Guggenheim was born in Manchester 11 August 1901, the son of Armand Guggenheim and Marguerite Bertha Simon. His father was Swiss, a naturalised British citizen. Guggenheim married Simone Ganzin (died 1954), in 1934 and Ruth Helen Aitkin, born Clarke, widow, in 1955. They had no children. He died in Reading, Berkshire 9 August 1970.
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Education
Guggenheim was educated at Terra Nova School, Southport, Charterhouse School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained firsts in both the mathematics part 1 and chemistry part 2 triposes. Unable to gain a fellowship at the college, he went to Denmark where he studied under J. N. Brønsted at the University of Copenhagen.
Career
Returning to England, he found a place at University College, London where he wrote his first book, Modern Thermodynamics by the Methods of Willard Gibbs (1933), which "established his reputation and revolutionized the teaching of the subject". He was also a visiting professor of chemistry at Stanford University, and later became a reader in the chemical engineering department at Imperial College London. During World War II he worked on defence matters for the navy. In 1946 he was appointed professor of chemistry and head of department at Reading University, where he stayed until his retirement in 1966.
Honours and awards
Guggenheim was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1946. His nomination reads
Distinguished for his important contributions to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and for the applications of these branches of physical science in many fields, e.g. electrolytic solutions, electro-chemical potentials, magnetic and electrostatic energy, surface and interfacial phenomena, stellar interiors, chemical equilibria and reaction kinetics, co-operative assemblies, theory of super-lattices, etc. Author of "Modern Thermodynamics by the Methods of Willard Gibbs" (1933). Joint author with Professor R. H. Fowler of "Statistical Thermodynamics" (1939).
In 1972, the E. A. Guggenheim Memorial Fund was established by friends and colleagues. The income from the fund is used to (a) award an annual prize and (b) to provide a biennial or triennial memorial lecture on some topic of chemistry or physics appropriate to the interests of Guggenheim.
The Guggenheim Medal was introduced in 2014 by the Institution of Chemical Engineers for significant contributions to research in thermodynamics and / or complex fluids. The first recipient (in 2015) was Professor George Jackson of Imperial College London.