David Chapman

Education and early life Chapman was born in Wells, Norfolk but moved with his family to Manchester and attended Manchester Grammar School. He then went to Christ Church, Oxford, obtaining degrees in chemistry (1893, 1st class) and physics (1894, 2nd class).

Personal life Campman was by reputation something of a scientific recluse, difficult to dislodge from his laboratory, although he did play a full part in University and College affairs.

Research Although Chapman took a keen interest in his students, research was his main priority. Chapman had a particular interest in the photochemical reaction of hydrogen and chlorine, establishing that minute traces of impurities caused unexpected consequences. He suggested the steady state hypothesis in 1913. He discovered that the interruption of light by a rotating sector caused the rate of the reaction to vary with the frequency of the sector and, in 1926, he was the first to apply this theory to measure the 'mean life' of a reaction intermediate. Other areas of interest were the theory of detonation in gases (the subject of an important paper that Chapman published in 1899, with reliable calculations of detonation speeds; the theory is still known as the Chapman-Jouget treatment) and the distribution of ions at a charged surface (with the name of the Gouy-Chapman layer being given to the surface layer that he envisaged).