Nernst’s calorimeter

This column was born out of a fairly silly premise. What was needed to make a scientist famous? Was it the award of a great prize, the discovery of some fundamental law, or perhaps the development of a remarkable piece of kit? We settled for the kit, on the grounds that some pieces – the ‘Bunsen’ for example – are so well know that the name had become a parodic metaphor for the entire experimental enterprise.

And yet there are some people who don’t fit this mould. Yes, they have a piece of apparatus. Yes, they have a famous equation. And yet perhaps their greatest achievement is not often connected with them. One such was Walther Nernst.