Rydberg, Johannes Robert
Rydberg, Johannes Robert
(yo͞o`hänəs rô`bərt rüd`bĕryə), 1854–1919, Swedish physicist. Rydberg was a professor at Lund from 1901 to 1919. He is best known for his grouping of the frequencies of certain lines of the emission spectra of the elements into simple series characterized by a running integer and a universal "Rydberg" constant. These series helped guide the development of atomic physics. Rydberg also wrote on the structure of the periodic tableperiodic table,chart of the elements arranged according to the periodic law discovered by Dmitri I. Mendeleev and revised by Henry G. J. Moseley. In the periodic table the elements are arranged in columns and rows according to increasing atomic number (see the table entitled
..... Click the link for more information. of the elements.
Rydberg, Johannes Robert
Born Nov. 8, 1854, in Halmstad; died Dec. 28, 1919, in Lund. Swedish physicist.
After graduating from the University of Lund in 1879, Rydberg became a docent at the university; he became a professor in 1901. His main work was devoted to D. I. Mendeleev’s periodic system of the elements and to atomic spectra. Rydberg showed that the position of the lines in atomic emission spectra may be described by equations analogous to the Balmer equation for the spectrum of hydrogen. The constant introduced into these equations is called the Rydberg constant.