Thursday, July 10, 2008

Roscoe Dickinson


Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson was a U.S. chemist, known primarily for his work on X-ray crystallography. As professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), he was the doctoral advisor of Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and of Arnold O. Beckmann, inventor of the pH meter.

Dickinson received his undergraduate education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, in 1920, became the first person to receive a PhD from Caltech. For his dissertation he had studied the crystal structures of wulfenite, scheelite, sodium chlorate, and sodium bromate. His graduate advisor was Arthur Amos Noyes.