ABSTRACT
I. BEGINNINGS I had an early introduction to separation science. In 1951, almost fresh from university, I joined the physical chemistry group at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), at Harwell, England. This was a time when ion-exchange resins were just coming into widespread use, and one of the projects of this group was defining the fundamental properties of these new materials. My assignment was to study the electrochemical properties of a commercial ion-exchange resin, Dowex 50, so I spent the next couple of years developing techniques for measuring the electrical conductances and ion mobilities of this cation exchanger in various counterionic forms. The project was full of interest and challenge. At the experimental level there was the challenge of designing and building novel apparatus to make the conductance and mobility measurements on these particulate materials. At the theoretical level, finding a relationship between the conductance of a suspension of ion-exchange particles in an electrolyte and the separate conductances of the ion exchanger and electrolyte phases was a challenge until I discovered that Maxwell, some 150 years earlier, had developed a theory about the conductance of conducting spheres in a conducting medium. When I applied the Maxwell theory to our ion-exchange systems, the agreement between experiment and theory was remarkably good. Discovering a connection between my work and what had been done many years before by the great Maxwell added to the delight that I was beginning to feel in doing research.
