Moseley wrote an account of his experiences during the voyage on HMS Challenger, “Notes of a Naturalist on the Challenger” (1879). His father Henry Nottidge Moseley was a professor of anatomy and physiology at the Oxford University.He joined the scientific staff of HMS Challenger to study ocean bottoms for four years (1872-1876). He came from a rich and aristocratic family that included famous scientists. was born on November 23, 1887, in Weymouth, Dorset, England. I even wrote a small book about Moseley at the request of the Turkish Academy of Sciences, where I had given a talk about him. I’ve had the opportunity to give talks about Moseley in a friendship meeting between the Turkish and British organizations dedicated to the remembrance of this battle, as well as to several universities in Turkey. My work and the work of many scientists depend on the periodic table, so it’s important for us to remember the work of those who contributed to it. I’m originally from Turkey and a scientist. My fascination with this battle is an intersection of where I am from and what I do.
I had always been interested in the history of the battle of Gallipoli and had previously visited the battlefields four times. I became very interested in finding out more about Moseley’s death, his scientific contributions and how he ended up being in the middle of this battle. There was also a picture of Moseley in his military uniform.
Who was Henry Moseley and what was his relationship to the Periodic Table of the Elements? I became aware of Moseley’s death at the battle of Gallipoli when I was reading Richard Rhodes’s book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” in 2008. He was 27 years old, about three months short of his 28 th birthday. Among the soldiers killed, there was a Second Lieutenant by the name of Henry Moseley, who got shot in the head and died instantly. The battle was very intense and General Baldwin and his soldiers totaling to about 1,000 were killed. Some of the Turkish soldiers reached a place called The Farm about 400 m below the Chunuk Bair, where the 38 th Brigade of British soldiers commanded by General Antony Baldwin were trying to attack the hill.
Both sides suffered very heavy casualties. Early morning, three regiments of the Turkish soldiers attacked the British soldiers and swept them from the hill. For both sides, this hill was absolutely crucial to the victory or loss of the whole battle of Gallipoli. One of the bloody battles took place at a hill called Chunuk Bair (Conkbayırı) (280 m high) on August 10, 1915, which was partly occupied by the soldiers from New Zealand, who were later replaced by those from Britain a day earlier. The battles on the Gallipoli front were very bloody and caused heavy casualties totaling to about 250,000 dead or wounded soldiers on each side. Earlier on March 18, 1915, sixteen of the British and French battleships with two ships in reserve had failed to pass through the Dardanelles and retreated with heavy losses. The other goal was to open a supply line to the Russian Empire that was struggling in battles against Germany on its Western front. The goal was to control the Straits of the Dardanelles, separating the European part of the Ottoman Empire from its Asian part Anatolia so that the allied battleships can reach Constantinople (Istanbul) and knock out the Ottoman Empire from the war. World War I, Gallipoli front, the allied forces consisting of the soldiers from Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand attacked and partly occupied the Gallipoli Peninsula of the Ottoman Empire (present Turkey) starting April 25, 1915.