William Barlow FRS (8 August 1845 – 28 February 1934) was an English amateur geologist specialising in crystallography. He was born in Islington, in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, England. His father became wealthy as a speculative builder as well as a building surveyor, allowing William to have a private education. After his father died in 1875, William and his brother inherited this fortune, allowing him to pursue his interest in crystallography without a need to labour for a living. William examined the forms of

crystalline A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...

structures, and deduced that there were only 230 forms of symmetrical crystal arrangements, known as

space groups In mathematics, physics and chemistry, a space group is the symmetry group of an object in space, usually in three dimensions. The elements of a space group (its symmetry operations) are the rigid transformations of an object that leave it unchan ...

. His results were published in 1894, after they had been independently announced by

Evgraf Fedorov Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov (russian: Евгра́ф Степа́нович Фёдоров, – 21 May 1919) was a Russian mathematician, crystallographer and mineralogist. Fedorov was born in the Russian city of Orenburg. His father was a top ...

and Arthur Schönflies, although his approach did display some novelty. His structural models of simple compounds such as

NaCl Sodium chloride , commonly known as salt (although sea salt also contains other chemical salts), is an ionic compound with the chemical formula NaCl, representing a 1:1 ratio of sodium and chloride ions. With molar masses of 22.99 and 35.45 g/ ...

and

CsCl CSCL can refer to: * Caesium chloride (CsCl), a chemical compound. * Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, a research topic on supporting collaborative learning with the assistance of computer artifacts. * China Shipping Container Lines, a c ...

were later confirmed using

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

. He served as the president of the English Mineralogical Society from 1915 until 1918. He died in Great Stanmore,

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbour ...

, England.

Awards and honours

* Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, 1908. * The wrinkle ridge ''

Dorsa Barlow Dorsa Barlow is a wrinkle ridge system on the Moon, in Mare Tranquilitatis near the border with Mare Serenitatis Mare Serenitatis (Latin ''serēnitātis'', the "Sea of Serenity") is a lunar mare located to the east of Mare Imbrium on the Moon. I ...

'' on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

was named after him. * The mineral barlowite, Cu4FBr(OH)6, approved in 2010, was named in his honor.

Notes

1845 births 1934 deaths English geologists Fellows of the Royal Society British crystallographers {{UK-geologist-stub