The death of Mr. C. T. Heycook, which took place oil June 3, removes from among us one who has gained the affection of generations of Cambridge men and who was a pioneer in an important branch of inorganic chemistry. Heycock was the younger son of Frederick Heycock, of Braunston, Oakham, and was born on August 21, 1858; he received his early education at the Grammar Schools of Bedford and Oakham, and entered King's College, Cam-bridge, as an Exhibitioner in 1877, taking the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1880. For many years he taught Chemistry, Physics and Mineralogy for the Cambridge examinations and in 1895 he was elected to a Fellowship at King’s College, becoming a College lecturer and Natural Sciences Tutor in the following year, lie was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1895 and was awarded the Davy Medal in 1920 for his work on alloys. His original work on the metals attracted the attention of the Goldsmiths Company who endowed a Readership in Metallurgy at Cambridge; he was appointed to this office in 1908 and held it until his retirement in 1928. He was admitted to the Livery of the Gold-smiths Company in 1909 and to the Court in 1913; he acted as Prime Warden during the year 1922-1923 and took a been interest in the work of the Company’s Assay Office. Notwithstanding the exacting character of his work as a Cambridge coach, Heycock joined with his lifelong friend, F. H. Neville, F.R.S., in a comprehensive study of the metals and their alloys; this partnership, which was only dissolved by the death of Neville in 1915, led to a remarkable series of papers in which novel directions of investigation were mapped out and developed. Before entering upon this joint work, Heycock had had some experience as an investigator; in 1876 he published a not on the spectrum of indium in conjunction with Mr. A. W. Clayden, M. A., and in 1882 he contributed a paper on the atomic weight of rubidium at the British Association meeting. Heycock and Neville’s first joint paper was published in 1884 and described a redetermination of the molecular weight of ozone by the diffusion method. The first of the series of papers on the metals was published in 1889 and dealt with the depression of the freezing points of metals brought about by others dissolved therein; in this, and later papers, it was shown that the addition of small amounts of a second metal depresses the freezing point of the first to an extent (1) directly proportionate to the weight, of metal added, and (2) in rough inverse proportion to the atomic or molecular weight of the added metal. Raoult’s law for ordinary solutions was thus extended to alloys and a method indicated for calculating the latent heat of fusion of a metal by the application to the freezing point depressions of the now well-known van't Hoff equation. At the outset mercury thermometers were used in the temperature measurements and only alloys of low melting points could be studied: the introduction by H. L. Callendar of the platinum resistance pyrometer made it possible to extend the scope of the investigation to metals of high melting point. At that time the melting points of silver, gold and copper were not known with any degree of accuracy, partly because of the difficulty of making the physical measurements, partly because the necessity for using metals of high chemical purity and for protecting them from contamination during melting had not been recognised. A number of fixed points on the platinum resistance pyrometer had to be established before the study of alloys of high melting points was undertaken; these fixed points were determined with the aid of Dr. E. H. Griffiths, F. R. S., and with such accuracy that the results obtained by their use have not since been seriously affected. Thus, Heycock and Neville determined the melting point of Levol’s alloy as 778.7° C. and used this constant as a secondary fixed point; a very recent determination by the Washington Bureau of Standards gives the melting point as 779.4°.
On the spontaneous crystallisation of monochloracetic acid and its mixtures with naphthalene
