Sir James Dewar

James Dewar was born in 1842 in Kincaide, Scotland. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh and later became a professor of experimental natural philosophy at the University of Cambridge in England. In 1877 he became a professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He did quite a bit of work dealing with chemical structures and was the first person to produce liquid hydrogen (1898) and to solidify it (1899). In 1891 he made a machine that could make liquid oxygen in large amounts. Working with Sir Frederick Abel in 1889, he helped to invent cordite, a smokeless gunpowder. He was knighted for his many discoveries and his work in chemistry in 1904.

Perhaps what James Dewar was most known for was his creation of Dewar Flask in 1892. More commonly known as a thermos, a dewar flask consists of two flasks, on inside the other, with a vacuum in the space between them. This greatly cuts down on any transfer of heat to whatever is inside the thermos. He created it to help with all his work with various kinds of gas. It became manufactured for commercial and home use in 1904.

Link to a picture of James Dewar
http://www.absolutezerocampaign.org/get_involved/short_bios/images/dewar.jpg

Link to a picture of a Dewar Flask
http://www.finemech.com/kgw_isotherm/spherical_flasks.gif