Sir William Ramsay was a Scottish physical chemist who at the end of the 19th century discovered four new elements. These were the noble gases, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon; they added a whole new group to the Periodic Table of the elements.
William Ramsay was born on 2nd October 1852, and received his basic education in Glasgow before traveling to Germany to earn a doctorate in organic chemistry. He was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in recognition of this achievement.
The remarkable inertness of the newly found elements resulted in their use for special purposes, for example, helium instead of highly flammable hydrogen for lighter-than-air craft and argon to conserve the filaments in light bulbs.
Upon the outbreak of war in 1914, he became involved in efforts to secure the participation of scientific experts in the creation of government science policy. He died on 23rd July, 1916.
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