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Show 4l walked by. The two men then left. train bound for Wisconsin. Later that evening he caught his He had suspected that the two men were not exactly honorable but when the one man was not on the train, he was sure he had spent the day with two con-men, who no doubt would have taken advantage of him had they had the opportunity. ' During his first year at Wisconsin, Eyring taught laboratory courses in physical chemistry and continued his radioactivity research on the stopping power of various gases. At the end of the l928 school year, he was given a full time research position at the University with Professor Farrington Daniels. In the summer of l928, they began study- ing the decomposition of nitrogen pentoxide (N205) in a number of solvents. Eyring worked hard in the laboratory just as he had at Arizona and Berkeley. He was particularly fascinated by the wide variance in the decomposition rate of the nitrogen pentoxide in the solvents worked with. The unique thing about this reaction (2i4205e 4N02+02) is that it is unimolecular and that the rate of the reaction can be measured by the volume of oxygen released. The experience with Professor Daniels was an important turning point in his career. He left his radiation studies and began to consider reaction kinetics, the subject which would dominate his thought and research for the remainder of his life. Professor Daniels, a great chemist in his own right, later wrote to Eyring: "I consider that one of my most important achievements in science was my success in getting you interested in the field of chemical kinetics."19 The year and two summers at Wisconsin provided Eyring with rich training in experimental reaction rates. In addition, during his second year at Wisconsin he was able to attend the lectures of physics professor John H. Van Vleck on quantum mechanics. Van Vleck, one of America's |
