Alfred Lauck Parson

In the history of chemistry, Alfred Lauck Parson (1889 Lucknow, India - 1970 Allonby, England) was a Harvard graduate student noted for his "magneton theory" of the atom.^[1][2] Significantly, to note, between 1913 and 1915, Parson was a visiting student at the University of California, Berkeley, where coincidently Gilbert N. Lewis was working as the chair of the department of chemistry. During these years, Lewis read a paper by Parson, which argued that the electron, in the Bohr model, might be a ring of negative electricity spinning with a high velocity about its axis and that a chemical bond results from two electrons being shared between two atoms. Parson published the final draft of his theory in 1915. Stimulated by this paper, Lewis published his famous 1916 article "The Atom and the Molecule", in which a chemical bond forms owing to the sharing of pairs of electrons.^[3]

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Parson magneton

The Parson magneton, also known as the "magnetic electron," was a hypothetical object in atomic physics suggested by Parson in 1915: an electron ring that generates a magnetic field. It was the basis of Parson's model of the atom.

See also

• History of the molecule
• History of quantum mechanics

References

1. ^ Parson, A. L. (1915). “Magneton Theory of the Structure of the Atom.” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, Pub 2419, V65, N11, 1916; [Pub.no.2371, 80pgs, 2 plates, Nov, 29, 1915].
2. ^ Used spherical charge model for atom (ion); developed further by C. Davisson, L. O. Grondahl, D. L. Webster, H. S. Allen, A. H. Compton, and others.
3. ^ The Atom and the Molecule (1916)

Further reading

• Webster, David L. (1917). "The Theory of Electromagnetic Mass of the Parson Magneton and other Non-Spherical Systems." Phys. Rev. 9, 484 - 499