Sir James Dewar

Chemist and physicist, born in Kincardine, Fife, E Scotland, UK. He studied chemistry at Edinburgh, and in 1875 became professor at Cambridge. Two years later he also became professor at the Royal Institution, London, where he lived, lectured, and pursued a wide range of experimental research; he visited Cambridge rarely. In the 1870s he invented the Dewar flask (or thermos flask), using it in his studies of low temperatures and gas liquefaction (1892). With Frederick Abel he invented cordite, for long the British standard military propellent.

Sir James Dewar (September 20, 1842 – March 27, 1923) was a Scottish chemist and physicist.

He was the youngest of six boys, and lost his parents at the age of 15. Later he became professor at the University of Cambridge in 1875 and became a member of the Royal Institution in 1877. He developed a chemical formula for benzene, now called Dewar benzene, and performed extensive work in spectroscopy for more than 25 years. He developed an insulating bottle, the Dewar flask, still named after him, to study low temperature gas phenomena.

Along with Frederick Augustus Abel, Dewar developed cordite, a smokeless gunpowder alternative.

He died in London in 1923.