History of chemistry
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The history of chemistry represents a time span from ancient history to the present. By 1000 BC, civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Examples include the discovery of fire, extracting metals from ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume, rendering fat into soap, making glass, and making alloys like bronze.
The protoscience of chemistry,
The history of chemistry is intertwined with the
Ancient history
Early humans
Fire
Arguably the first chemical reaction used in a controlled manner was fire. However, for millennia fire was seen simply as a mystical force that could transform one substance into another (burning wood, or boiling water) while producing heat and light. Fire affected many aspects of early societies. These ranged from the simplest facets of everyday life, such as cooking and habitat heating and lighting, to more advanced uses, such as making pottery and bricks and melting of metals to make tools. It was fire that led to the discovery of glass and the purification of metals; this was followed by the rise of metallurgy.[2]
Paint
A 100,000-year-old ochre-processing workshop was found at Blombos Cave in South Africa. It indicates that early humans had an elementary knowledge of chemistry. Paintings drawn by early humans consisting of early humans mixing animal blood with other liquids found on cave walls also indicate a small knowledge of chemistry.[3][4]
Early metallurgy
The earliest recorded metal employed by humans seems to be gold, which can be found free or "native". Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, around 40,000 BC.[5]
Silver, copper, tin and meteoric iron can also be found native, allowing a limited amount of metalworking in ancient cultures.[6] Egyptian weapons made from meteoric iron in about 3000 BC were highly prized as "daggers from Heaven".[7]
During the early stages of metallurgy, methods of purification of metals were sought, and gold, known in ancient Egypt as early as 2900 BC, became a precious metal.
Bronze Age
Tin, lead, and copper smelting
Certain metals can be recovered from their ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire: notably
Bronze
These first metals were single elements, or else combinations as naturally occurred. By combining copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an
After the Bronze Age, the history of metallurgy was marked by armies seeking better weaponry. States in Eurasia prospered when they made the superior alloys, which, in turn, made better armor and better weapons.[citation needed] Significant progress in metallurgy and alchemy was made in ancient India.[11]
Iron Age
Ferrous metallurgy
The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal is much more difficult than copper or tin. While iron is not better suited for tools than bronze (until steel was discovered), iron ore is much more abundant and common than either copper or tin, and therefore more often available locally, with no need to trade for it.
Iron working appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, beginning the Iron Age. The secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Philistines.[7][12]
The Iron Age refers to the advent of iron working (
Classical antiquity and atomism
Philosophical attempts to rationalize why different substances have different properties (color, density, smell), exist in different states (gaseous, liquid, and solid), and react in a different manner when exposed to environments, for example to water or fire or temperature changes, led ancient philosophers to postulate the first theories on nature and chemistry. The history of such philosophical theories that relate to chemistry can probably be traced back to every single ancient civilization. The common aspect in all these theories was the attempt to identify a small number of primary
Ancient world
Around 420 BC,
With the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience, the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius[16] wrote De rerum natura (The Nature of Things)[17] in 50 BC. In the work, Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena.
The earliest alchemists in the Western tradition seemed to have come from
Medieval alchemy
The elemental system used in medieval
The three metallic principles (sulphur to flammability or combustion, mercury to volatility and stability, and salt to solidity) became the tria prima of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He reasoned that Aristotle's four-element theory appeared in bodies as three principles. Paracelsus saw these principles as fundamental and justified them by recourse to the description of how wood burns in fire. Mercury included the cohesive principle, so that when it left the wood (in smoke) the wood fell apart. Smoke described the volatility (the mercurial principle), the heat-giving flames described flammability (sulphur), and the remnant ash described solidity (salt).[22]
The philosopher's stone
Alchemy is defined by the
During the Renaissance, exoteric alchemy remained popular in the form of
Alchemy in the Islamic world
In the
Problems encountered with alchemy
There were several problems with alchemy, as seen from today's standpoint. There was no systematic naming scheme for new compounds, and the language was esoteric and vague to the point that the terminologies meant different things to different people. In fact, according to The Fontana History of Chemistry (Brock, 1992):
The language of alchemy soon developed an arcane and secretive technical vocabulary designed to conceal information from the uninitiated. To a large degree, this language is incomprehensible to us today, though it is apparent that readers of
Canon's Yeoman's Tale or audiences of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist were able to construe it sufficiently to laugh at it.[31]
Chaucer's tale exposed the more fraudulent side of alchemy, especially the manufacture of counterfeit gold from cheap substances. Less than a century earlier, Dante Alighieri also demonstrated an awareness of this fraudulence, causing him to consign all alchemists to the Inferno in his writings. Soon afterwards, in 1317, the Avignon Pope John XXII ordered all alchemists to leave France for making counterfeit money. A law was passed in England in 1403 which made the "multiplication of metals" punishable by death. Despite these and other apparently extreme measures, alchemy did not die. Royalty and privileged classes still sought to discover the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life for themselves.[32]
There was also no agreed-upon scientific method for making experiments reproducible. Indeed, many alchemists included in their methods irrelevant information such as the timing of the tides or the phases of the moon. The esoteric nature and codified vocabulary of alchemy appeared to be more useful in concealing the fact that they could not be sure of very much at all. As early as the 14th century, cracks seemed to grow in the facade of alchemy; and people became sceptical.[citation needed] Clearly, there needed to be a scientific method in which experiments could be repeated by other people, and results needed to be reported in a clear language that laid out both what was known and what was unknown.
17th and 18th centuries: Early chemistry
Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their extraction to smelt metals was an important source of information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them
In 1605,
The Dutch chemist
Robert Boyle
Anglo-Irish chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) is considered to have initiated the gradual separation of chemistry from alchemy.[39] Although skeptical of elements and convinced of alchemy, Boyle played a key part in elevating the "sacred art" as an independent, fundamental and philosophical discipline. He is best known for Boyle's law, which he presented in 1662, though he was not the first to discover it.[40] The law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system.[41][42]
Boyle is also credited for his landmark publication The Sceptical Chymist (1661), which advocated for a rigorous approach to experimentation among chemists. In the work, Boyle questioned some commonly held alchemical theories and argued for practitioners to be more "philosophical" and less commercially focused.[43] He rejected the classical four elements of earth, fire, air, and water, and proposed a mechanistic alternative of atoms and chemical reactions that could be subject to rigorous experiment.
Boyle also tried to purify chemicals to obtain reproducible reactions. He was a vocal proponent of the mechanical philosophy proposed by René Descartes to explain and quantify the physical properties and interactions of material substances. Boyle was an atomist, but favoured the word corpuscle over atoms. He commented that the finest division of matter where the properties are retained is at the level of corpuscles.
Boyle repeated the tree experiment of van Helmont, and was the first to use
Development and dismantling of phlogiston
In 1702, German chemist
In 1754, Scottish chemist
In 1773, Swedish chemist
In 1781, Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered that a new acid, tungstic acid, could be made from Cronstedt's scheelite (at the time named tungsten). Scheele and Torbern Bergman suggested that it might be possible to obtain a new metal by reducing this acid.[52] In 1783, José and Fausto Elhuyar found an acid made from wolframite that was identical to tungstic acid. Later that year, in Spain, the brothers succeeded in isolating the metal now known as tungsten by reduction of this acid with charcoal, and they are credited with the discovery of the element.[53][54]
Volta and the Voltaic pile
Italian physicist
In 1800, Volta stacked several pairs of alternating
Thus, Volta is considered to be the founder of the discipline of electrochemistry.[56] A Galvanic cell (or voltaic cell) is an electrochemical cell that derives electrical energy from a spontaneous redox reaction taking place within the cell. It generally consists of two different metals connected by a salt bridge, or individual half-cells separated by a porous membrane.
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier demonstrated with careful measurements that transmutation of water to earth was not possible, but that the sediment observed from boiling water came from the container. He burnt phosphorus and sulfur in air, and proved that the products weighed more than the original samples, with the mass gained being lost from the air. Thus, in 1789, he established the Law of Conservation of Mass, which is also called "Lavoisier's Law."[57]
Repeating the experiments of Priestley, he demonstrated that air is composed of two parts, one of which combines with metals to form calxes. In Considérations Générales sur la Nature des Acides (1778), he demonstrated that the "air" responsible for combustion was also the source of acidity. The next year, he named this portion oxygen (Greek for acid-former), and the other azote (Greek for no life). Because of his more thorough characterization of it as an element, Lavoisier thus has a claim to the discovery of oxygen along with Priestley and Scheele. He also discovered that the "inflammable air" discovered by Cavendish – which he termed hydrogen (Greek for water-former) – combined with oxygen to produce a dew, as Priestley had reported, which appeared to be water. In Reflexions sur le Phlogistique (1783), Lavoisier showed the phlogiston theory of combustion to be inconsistent. Mikhail Lomonosov independently established a tradition of chemistry in Russia in the 18th century; he also rejected the phlogiston theory, and anticipated the kinetic theory of gases. Lomonosov regarded heat as a form of motion, and stated the idea of conservation of matter.
Lavoisier worked with Claude Louis Berthollet and others to devise a system of chemical nomenclature, which serves as the basis of the modern system of naming chemical compounds. In his Methods of Chemical Nomenclature (1787), Lavoisier invented the system of naming and classification still largely in use today, including names such as sulfuric acid, sulfates, and sulfites. In 1785, Berthollet was the first to introduce the use of chlorine gas as a commercial bleach. In the same year he first determined the elemental composition of the gas ammonia. Berthollet first produced a modern bleaching liquid in 1789 by passing chlorine gas through a solution of sodium carbonate – the result was a weak solution of sodium hypochlorite. Another strong chlorine oxidant and bleach which he investigated and was the first to produce, potassium chlorate (KClO3), is known as Berthollet's Salt. Berthollet is also known for his scientific contributions to the theory of chemical equilibrium via the mechanism of reversible reactions.
Lavoisier's Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry, 1789) was the first modern chemical textbook, and presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, contained a clear statement of the Law of Conservation of Mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston. In addition, it contained a list of elements, or substances that could not be broken down further, which included oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, mercury, zinc, and sulfur. His list, however, also included light and caloric, which he believed to be material substances. In the work, Lavoisier underscored the observational basis of his chemistry, stating "I have tried...to arrive at the truth by linking up facts; to suppress as much as possible the use of reasoning, which is often an unreliable instrument which deceives us, in order to follow as much as possible the torch of observation and of experiment." Nevertheless, he believed that the real existence of atoms was philosophically impossible. Lavoisier demonstrated that organisms disassemble and reconstitute atmospheric air in the same manner as a burning body.
With Pierre-Simon Laplace, Lavoisier used a calorimeter to estimate the heat evolved per unit of carbon dioxide produced. They found the same ratio for a flame and animals, indicating that animals produced energy by a type of combustion. Lavoisier believed in the radical theory, which stated that radicals, which function as a single group in a chemical reaction, would combine with oxygen in reactions. He believed all acids contained oxygen. He also discovered that diamond is a crystalline form of carbon.
Although many of Lavoisier's partners were influential for the advancement of chemistry as a scientific discipline, his wife Marie-Anne Lavoisier was arguably the most influential of them all. Upon their marriage, Mme. Lavoisier began to study chemistry, English, and drawing in order to help her husband in his work either by translating papers into English, a language which Lavoisier did not know, or by keeping records and drawing the various apparatuses that Lavoisier used in his labs.[58] Through her ability to read and translate articles from Britain for her husband, Lavoisier had access to knowledge of many of the chemical advances happening outside of his lab. Furthermore, Mme. Lavoisier kept records of her husband's work and ensured that his works were published. The first sign of Marie-Anne's true potential as a chemist in Lavoisier's lab came when she was translating a book by the scientist Richard Kirwan. While translating, she stumbled upon and corrected multiple errors. When she presented her translation, along with her notes, to Lavoisier, her contributions led to Lavoisier's refutation of the theory of phlogiston.
Lavoisier made many fundamental contributions to the science of chemistry. Following his work, chemistry acquired a strict, quantitative nature, allowing reliable predictions to be made. The revolution in chemistry which he brought about was a result of a conscious effort to fit all experiments into the framework of a single theory. He established the consistent use of chemical balance, used oxygen to overthrow the phlogiston theory, and developed a new system of chemical nomenclature. Further potential contributions were cut short when Lavoisier was beheaded during the French Revolution.
19th century
In 1802, French American chemist and industrialist
Throughout the 19th century, chemistry was divided between those who followed the atomic theory of
Well before the dispute had been settled, many had already applied the concept of atomism to chemistry. A major example was the ion theory of Svante Arrhenius which anticipated ideas about atomic substructure that did not fully develop until the 20th century. Michael Faraday was another early worker, whose major contribution to chemistry was electrochemistry, in which (among other things) a certain quantity of electricity during electrolysis or electrodeposition of metals was shown to be associated with certain quantities of chemical elements, and fixed quantities of the elements therefore with each other, in specific ratios.[citation needed] These findings, like those of Dalton's combining ratios, were early clues to the atomic nature of matter.
John Dalton
In 1803, English meteorologist and chemist John Dalton proposed Dalton's law, which describes the relationship between the components in a mixture of gases and the relative pressure each contributes to that of the overall mixture.[60] Discovered in 1801, this concept is also known as Dalton's law of partial pressures.
Dalton also proposed a modern
Instead, Dalton inferred proportions of elements in compounds by taking ratios of the weights of reactants, setting the atomic weight of hydrogen to be identically one. Following Jeremias Benjamin Richter (known for introducing the term stoichiometry), he proposed that chemical elements combine in integral ratios. This is known as the law of multiple proportions or Dalton's law, and Dalton included a clear description of the law in his New System of Chemical Philosophy. The law of multiple proportions is one of the basic laws of stoichiometry used to establish the atomic theory. Despite the importance of the work as the first view of atoms as physically real entities and the introduction of a system of chemical symbols, New System of Chemical Philosophy devoted almost as much space to the caloric theory as to atomism.
French chemist Joseph Proust proposed the law of definite proportions, which states that elements always combine in small, whole number ratios to form compounds, based on several experiments conducted between 1797 and 1804[61] Along with the law of multiple proportions, the law of definite proportions forms the basis of stoichiometry. The law of definite proportions and constant composition do not prove that atoms exist, but they are difficult to explain without assuming that chemical compounds are formed when atoms combine in constant proportions.
Jöns Jacob Berzelius
A Swedish chemist and disciple of Dalton, Jöns Jacob Berzelius embarked on a systematic program to try to make accurate and precise quantitative measurements and to ensure the purity of chemicals. Along with Lavoisier, Boyle, and Dalton, Berzelius is known as the father of modern chemistry. In 1828 he compiled a table of relative atomic weights, where oxygen was used as a standard, with its weight set at 100, and which included all of the elements known at the time. This work provided evidence in favor of Dalton's atomic theory – that inorganic chemical compounds are composed of atoms combined in whole number amounts. He determined the exact elementary constituents of a large number of compounds; the results strongly supported Proust's Law of Definite Proportions. In discovering that atomic weights are not integer multiples of the weight of hydrogen, Berzelius also disproved Prout's hypothesis that elements are built up from atoms of hydrogen.
Motivated by his extensive atomic weight determinations and in a desire to aid his experiments, he introduced the classical system of
Berzelius developed the
New elements and gas laws
English chemist
Davy also experimented with gases by inhaling them. This experimental procedure nearly proved fatal on several occasions, but led to the discovery of the unusual effects of nitrous oxide, which came to be known as laughing gas. Chlorine was discovered in 1774 by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who called it "dephlogisticated marine acid" (see phlogiston theory) and mistakenly thought it contained oxygen. Scheele observed several properties of chlorine gas, such as its bleaching effect on litmus, its deadly effect on insects, its yellow-green colour, and the similarity of its smell to that of aqua regia. However, Scheele was unable to publish his findings at the time. In 1810, chlorine was given its current name by Humphry Davy (derived from the Greek word for green), who insisted that chlorine was in fact an element.[66] He also showed that oxygen could not be obtained from the substance known as oxymuriatic acid (HCl solution). This discovery overturned Lavoisier's definition of acids as compounds of oxygen. Davy was a popular lecturer and able experimenter.
French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac shared the interest of Lavoisier and others in the quantitative study of the properties of gases. From his first major program of research in 1801–1802, he concluded that equal volumes of all gases expand equally with the same increase in temperature: this conclusion is usually called "Charles's law", as Gay-Lussac gave credit to Jacques Charles, who had arrived at nearly the same conclusion in the 1780s but had not published it.[67] The law was independently discovered by British natural philosopher John Dalton by 1801, although Dalton's description was less thorough than Gay-Lussac's.[68][69] In 1804 Gay-Lussac made several daring ascents of over 7,000 meters above sea level in hydrogen-filled balloons—a feat not equaled for another 50 years—that allowed him to investigate other aspects of gases. Not only did he gather magnetic measurements at various altitudes, but he also took pressure, temperature, and humidity measurements and samples of air, which he later analyzed chemically.
In 1808 Gay-Lussac announced what was probably his single greatest achievement: from his own and others' experiments he deduced that gases at constant temperature and pressure combine in simple numerical proportions by volume, and the resulting product or products—if gases—also bear a simple proportion by volume to the volumes of the reactants. In other words, gases under equal conditions of temperature and pressure react with one another in volume ratios of small whole numbers. This conclusion subsequently became known as "
The element
In 1815, Humphry Davy invented the
After Dalton published his atomic theory in 1808, certain of his central ideas were soon adopted by most chemists. However, uncertainty persisted for half a century about how atomic theory was to be configured and applied to concrete situations; chemists in different countries developed several different incompatible atomistic systems. A paper that suggested a way out of this difficult situation was published as early as 1811 by the Italian physicist
Avogadro's hypothesis was neglected for half a century after it was first published. Many reasons for this neglect have been cited, including some theoretical problems, such as Jöns Jacob Berzelius's "dualism", which asserted that compounds are held together by the attraction of positive and negative electrical charges, making it inconceivable that a molecule composed of two electrically similar atoms—as in oxygen—could exist. An additional barrier to acceptance was the fact that many chemists were reluctant to adopt physical methods (such as vapour-density determinations) to solve their problems. By mid-century, however, some leading figures had begun to view the chaotic multiplicity of competing systems of atomic weights and molecular formulas as intolerable. Moreover, purely chemical evidence began to mount that suggested Avogadro's approach might be right after all. During the 1850s, younger chemists, such as
Wöhler. von Liebig, organic chemistry and the vitalism debate
In 1825,
This opened a new research field in chemistry, and by the end of the 19th century, scientists were able to synthesize hundreds of organic compounds. The most important among them are
Vladimir Markovnikov
Vladimir Markovnikov, born in 1838, was a Russian scientist who did most of his work at Kazan University in Russia.[80] At Kazan, he studied under Butlerov in a laboratory better known as "the cradle of Russian organic chemistry", after which he also studied chemistry in Germany for two years.[80] Markovnikov's contributions to the fields of organic chemistry included the development of the eponymous Markovnikov's rule, which states that hydrogen halides when added to alkenes and alkynes would add in a way that hydrogens would bond to the side of the carbon with the most hydrogen substituents.[81] Products in chemistry that follow this rule are considered Markovnikov products and those that did not are considered anti-Markovnikov products.[81] Markovnikov's rule was an early example of regioselectivity in organic synthesis and the modern understanding of it continues to be important in the chemical industry, where catalysts have been developed to produce anti-Markovnikov products.[81] A significant aspect of Markovnikov's rule is that it explains reactivity based on the structural arrangement of atoms, as many chemists at the time did not consider chemical formulas as representing physical arrangement of atoms (see also radical theory).[82]
Mid-1800s
In 1840,
Avogadro's hypothesis began to gain broad appeal among chemists only after his compatriot and fellow scientist
Another point of contention had been the formulas for compounds of the
Perkin, Crookes, and Nobel
In 1856, Sir
German chemist
British chemist and physicist William Crookes is noted for his cathode ray studies, fundamental in the development of atomic physics. His researches on electrical discharges through a rarefied gas led him to observe the dark space around the cathode, now called the Crookes dark space. He demonstrated that cathode rays travel in straight lines and produce phosphorescence and heat when they strike certain materials. A pioneer of vacuum tubes, Crookes invented the Crookes tube – an early experimental discharge tube, with partial vacuum with which he studied the behavior of cathode rays. With the introduction of spectrum analysis by Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff (1859–1860), Crookes applied the new technique to the study of selenium compounds. Bunsen and Kirchhoff had previously used spectroscopy as a means of chemical analysis to discover caesium and rubidium. In 1861, Crookes used this process to discover thallium in some seleniferous deposits. He continued work on that new element, isolated it, studied its properties, and in 1873 determined its atomic weight. During his studies of thallium, Crookes discovered the principle of the Crookes radiometer, a device that converts light radiation into rotary motion. The principle of this radiometer has found numerous applications in the development of sensitive measuring instruments.
In 1862,
In 1865, August Kekulé, based partially on the work of Loschmidt and others, established the structure of benzene as a six carbon ring with alternating single and double bonds. Kekulé's novel proposal for benzene's cyclic structure was much contested but was never replaced by a superior theory. This theory provided the scientific basis for the dramatic expansion of the German chemical industry in the last third of the 19th century. Kekulé is also famous for having clarified the nature of aromatic compounds, which are compounds based on the benzene molecule. In 1865, Adolf von Baeyer began work on indigo dye, a milestone in modern industrial organic chemistry which revolutionized the dye industry.
Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert substance like kieselguhr (diatomaceous earth) it became safer and more convenient to handle, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as dynamite. Nobel later on combined nitroglycerin with various nitrocellulose compounds, similar to collodion, but settled on a more efficient recipe combining another nitrate explosive, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a more powerful explosive than dynamite. Gelignite, or blasting gelatin, as it was named, was patented in 1876; and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate and various other substances.
Mendeleev's periodic table
An important breakthrough in making sense of the list of known chemical elements (as well as in understanding the internal structure of atoms) was Dmitri Mendeleev's development of the first modern periodic table, or the periodic classification of the elements. Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, felt that there was some type of order to the elements and he spent more than thirteen years of his life collecting data and assembling the concept, initially with the idea of resolving some of the disorder in the field for his students. Mendeleev found that, when all the known chemical elements were arranged in order of increasing atomic weight, the resulting table displayed a recurring pattern, or periodicity, of properties within groups of elements. Mendeleev's law allowed him to build up a systematic periodic table of all the 66 elements then known based on atomic mass, which he published in Principles of Chemistry in 1869. His first Periodic Table was compiled on the basis of arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of properties.
Mendeleev had such faith in the validity of the periodic law that he proposed changes to the generally accepted values for the atomic weight of a few elements and, in his version of the periodic table of 1871, predicted the locations within the table of unknown elements together with their properties. He even predicted the likely properties of three yet-to-be-discovered elements, which he called ekaboron (Eb), ekaaluminium (Ea), and ekasilicon (Es), which proved to be good predictors of the properties of scandium, gallium, and germanium, respectively, which each fill the spot in the periodic table assigned by Mendeleev.
At first the periodic system did not raise interest among chemists. However, with the discovery of the predicted elements, notably gallium in 1875, scandium in 1879, and germanium in 1886, it began to win wide acceptance. The subsequent proof of many of his predictions within his lifetime brought fame to Mendeleev as the founder of the periodic law. This organization surpassed earlier attempts at classification by
In 1873,
Josiah Willard Gibbs
American mathematical physicist
Within this paper was perhaps his most outstanding contribution, the introduction of the concept of free energy, now universally called Gibbs free energy in his honor. The Gibbs free energy relates the tendency of a physical or chemical system to simultaneously lower its energy and increase its disorder, or entropy, in a spontaneous natural process. Gibbs's approach allows a researcher to calculate the change in free energy in the process, such as in a chemical reaction, and how fast it will happen. Since virtually all chemical processes and many physical ones involve such changes, his work has significantly impacted both the theoretical and experiential aspects of these sciences. In 1877, Ludwig Boltzmann established statistical derivations of many important physical and chemical concepts, including entropy, and distributions of molecular velocities in the gas phase.[89] Together with Boltzmann and James Clerk Maxwell, Gibbs created a new branch of theoretical physics called statistical mechanics (a term that he coined), explaining the laws of thermodynamics as consequences of the statistical properties of large ensembles of particles. Gibbs also worked on the application of Maxwell's equations to problems in physical optics. Gibbs's derivation of the phenomenological laws of thermodynamics from the statistical properties of systems with many particles was presented in his highly influential textbook Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics, published in 1902, a year before his death. In that work, Gibbs reviewed the relationship between the laws of thermodynamics and the statistical theory of molecular motions. The overshooting of the original function by partial sums of Fourier series at points of discontinuity is known as the Gibbs phenomenon.
Late 19th century
Carl von Linde and the modern chemical process
German engineer Carl von Linde's invention of a continuous process of liquefying gases in large quantities formed a basis for the modern technology of refrigeration and provided both impetus and means for conducting scientific research at low temperatures and very high vacuums. He developed a dimethyl ether refrigerator (1874) and an ammonia refrigerator (1876). Though other refrigeration units had been developed earlier, Linde's were the first to be designed with the aim of precise calculations of efficiency. In 1895 he set up a large-scale plant for the production of liquid air. Six years later he developed a method for separating pure liquid oxygen from liquid air that resulted in widespread industrial conversion to processes utilizing oxygen (e.g., in steel manufacture). He founded the Linde plc, the world's largest industrial gas company by market share and revenue.
In 1883, Svante Arrhenius developed an ion theory to explain conductivity in electrolytes.[91] In 1884, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff published Études de Dynamique chimique (Studies in Dynamic Chemistry), a seminal study on chemical kinetics.[92] In this work, van 't Hoff entered for the first time the field of physical chemistry. Of great importance was his development of the general thermodynamic relationship between the heat of conversion and the displacement of the equilibrium as a result of temperature variation. At constant volume, the equilibrium in a system will tend to shift in such a direction as to oppose the temperature change which is imposed upon the system. Thus, lowering the temperature results in heat development while increasing the temperature results in heat absorption. This principle of mobile equilibrium was subsequently (1885) put in a general form by Henry Louis Le Chatelier, who extended the principle to include compensation, by change of volume, for imposed pressure changes. The van 't Hoff-Le Chatelier principle, or simply Le Chatelier's principle, explains the response of dynamic chemical equilibria to external stresses.[93]
In 1884,
Ramsay's discovery of the noble gases
The most celebrated discoveries of Scottish chemist
The following year, Ramsay liberated another inert gas from a mineral called
In 1897,
Marie and Pierre Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish-born French physicist and chemist who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She and her husband are considered to have laid the cornerstone of the nuclear age with their research on radioactivity. Marie was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered in 1896 that uranium casts off rays similar to the X-rays discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen. Marie Curie began studying uranium in late 1897 and theorized, according to a 1904 article she wrote for Century magazine, "that the emission of rays by the compounds of uranium is a property of the metal itself—that it is an atomic property of the element uranium independent of its chemical or physical state." Curie took Becquerel's work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element's atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and the Curies coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomenon.
Pierre and Marie further explored radioactivity by working to separate the substances in uranium ores and then using the
While working with Marie to extract pure substances from ores, an undertaking that really required industrial resources but that they achieved in relatively primitive conditions, Pierre himself concentrated on the physical study (including luminous and chemical effects) of the new radiations. Through the action of magnetic fields on the rays given out by the radium, he proved the existence of particles that were electrically positive, negative, and neutral; these Ernest Rutherford was afterward to call alpha, beta, and gamma rays. Pierre then studied these radiations by calorimetry and also observed the physiological effects of radium, thus opening the way to radium therapy. Among Pierre Curie's discoveries were that ferromagnetic substances exhibited a critical temperature transition, above which the substances lost their ferromagnetic behavior – this is known as the "Curie point." He was elected to the Academy of Sciences (1905), having in 1903 jointly with Marie received the Royal Society's prestigious Davy Medal and jointly with her and Becquerel the Nobel Prize for Physics. He was run over by a carriage in the rue Dauphine in Paris in 1906 and died instantly. His complete works were published in 1908.
Ernest Rutherford
New Zealand-born chemist and physicist
He also observed that the intensity of radioactivity of a radioactive element decreases over a unique and regular amount of time until a point of stability, and he named the halving time the "
However, the actual results surprised Rutherford. Although many of the alpha particles did pass through as expected, many others were deflected at small angles while others were reflected back to the alpha source. They observed that a very small percentage of particles were deflected through angles much larger than 90 degrees. The gold foil experiment showed large deflections for a small fraction of incident particles. Rutherford realized that, because some of the alpha particles were deflected or reflected, the atom had a concentrated centre of positive charge and of relatively large mass – Rutherford later termed this positive center the "atomic nucleus". The alpha particles had either hit the positive centre directly or passed by it close enough to be affected by its positive charge. Since many other particles passed through the gold foil, the positive centre would have to be a relatively small size compared to the rest of the atom – meaning that the atom is mostly open space. From his results, Rutherford developed a model of the atom that was similar to the solar system, known as the Rutherford model. Like planets, electrons orbited a central, sun-like nucleus. For his work with radiation and the atomic nucleus, Rutherford received the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
20th century
In 1903, Mikhail Tsvet invented chromatography, an important analytic technique. In 1904, Hantaro Nagaoka proposed an early nuclear model of the atom, where electrons orbit a dense massive nucleus. In 1905, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed the Haber process for making ammonia, a milestone in industrial chemistry with deep consequences in agriculture. The Haber process, or Haber-Bosch process, combined nitrogen and hydrogen to form ammonia in industrial quantities for the production of fertilizer and munitions. The food production for half the world's current population depends on this method for producing fertilizer. Haber, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid. Haber has also been described as the "father of chemical warfare" for his work developing and deploying chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I.
In 1905,
In 1909,
Otto Hahn
Niels Bohr
In 1913, Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, introduced the concepts of quantum mechanics to atomic structure by proposing what is now known as the Bohr model of the atom, where electrons exist only in strictly defined circular orbits around the nucleus similar to rungs on a ladder. The Bohr Model is a planetary model in which the negatively charged electrons orbit a small, positively charged nucleus similar to the planets orbiting the Sun (except that the orbits are not planar) – the gravitational force of the solar system is mathematically akin to the attractive Coulomb (electrical) force between the positively charged nucleus and the negatively charged electrons.
In the Bohr model, however, electrons orbit the nucleus in orbits that have a set size and energy – the energy levels are said to be quantized, which means that only certain orbits with certain radii are allowed; orbits in between simply don't exist. The energy of the orbit is related to its size – that is, the lowest energy is found in the smallest orbit. Bohr also postulated that electromagnetic radiation is absorbed or emitted when an electron moves from one orbit to another. Because only certain electron orbits are permitted, the emission of light accompanying a jump of an electron from an excited energy state to ground state produces a unique emission spectrum for each element. Bohr later received the Nobel Prize in physics for this work.
Niels Bohr also worked on the principle of
In 1913, Henry Moseley, working from Van den Broek's earlier idea, introduced the concept of atomic number to fix some inadequacies of Mendeleev's periodic table, which had been based on atomic weight. The peak of Frederick Soddy's career in radiochemistry was in 1913 with his formulation of the concept of isotopes, which stated that certain elements exist in two or more forms which have different atomic weights but which are indistinguishable chemically. He is remembered for proving the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements, and is also credited, along with others, with the discovery of the element protactinium in 1917. In 1913, J. J. Thomson expanded on the work of Wien by showing that charged subatomic particles can be separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, a technique known as mass spectrometry.
Gilbert N. Lewis
American physical chemist Gilbert N. Lewis laid the foundation of valence bond theory; he was instrumental in developing a bonding theory based on the number of electrons in the outermost "valence" shell of the atom. In 1902, while Lewis was trying to explain valence to his students, he depicted atoms as constructed of a concentric series of cubes with electrons at each corner. This "cubic atom" explained the eight groups in the periodic table and represented his idea that chemical bonds are formed by electron transference to give each atom a complete set of eight outer electrons (an "octet").
Lewis's theory of chemical bonding continued to evolve and, in 1916, he published his seminal article "The Atom of the Molecule", which suggested that a chemical bond is a pair of electrons shared by two atoms. Lewis's model equated the classical
Shortly after the publication of his 1916 paper, Lewis became involved with military research. He did not return to the subject of chemical bonding until 1923, when he masterfully summarized his model in a short monograph entitled Valence and the Structure of Atoms and Molecules. His renewal of interest in this subject was largely stimulated by the activities of the American chemist and General Electric researcher Irving Langmuir, who between 1919 and 1921 popularized and elaborated Lewis's model. Langmuir subsequently introduced the term covalent bond. In 1921, Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach established the concept of quantum mechanical spin in subatomic particles.
For cases where no sharing was involved, Lewis in 1923 developed the electron pair theory of acids and base: Lewis redefined an acid as any atom or molecule with an incomplete octet that was thus capable of accepting electrons from another atom; bases were, of course, electron donors. His theory is known as the concept of Lewis acids and bases. In 1923, G. N. Lewis and Merle Randall published Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances, first modern treatise on chemical thermodynamics.
The 1920s saw a rapid adoption and application of Lewis's model of the electron-pair bond in the fields of organic and coordination chemistry. In organic chemistry, this was primarily due to the efforts of the British chemists
Quantum mechanics
From left to right, top row: Louis de Broglie (1892–1987) and Wolfgang Pauli (1900–58); second row: Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) and Werner Heisenberg (1901–76) |
In 1924, French quantum physicist Louis de Broglie published his thesis, in which he introduced a revolutionary theory of electron waves based on wave–particle duality. In his time, the wave and particle interpretations of light and matter were seen as being at odds with one another, but de Broglie suggested that these seemingly different characteristics were instead the same behavior observed from different perspectives — that particles can behave like waves, and waves (radiation) can behave like particles. Broglie's proposal offered an explanation of the restricted motion of electrons within the atom. The first publications of Broglie's idea of "matter waves" had drawn little attention from other physicists, but a copy of his doctoral thesis chanced to reach Einstein, whose response was enthusiastic. Einstein stressed the importance of Broglie's work both explicitly and by building further on it.
In 1925, Austrian-born physicist
In 1926 at the age of 39, Austrian theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger produced the papers that gave the foundations of quantum wave mechanics. In those papers he described his partial differential equation that is the basic equation of quantum mechanics and bears the same relation to the mechanics of the atom as Newton's equations of motion bear to planetary astronomy. Adopting a proposal made by Louis de Broglie in 1924 that particles of matter have a dual nature and in some situations act like waves, Schrödinger introduced a theory describing the behaviour of such a system by a wave equation that is now known as the Schrödinger equation. The solutions to Schrödinger's equation, unlike the solutions to Newton's equations, are wave functions that can only be related to the probable occurrence of physical events. The readily visualized sequence of events of the planetary orbits of Newton is, in quantum mechanics, replaced by the more abstract notion of probability. (This aspect of the quantum theory made Schrödinger and several other physicists profoundly unhappy, and he devoted much of his later life to formulating philosophical objections to the generally accepted interpretation of the theory that he had done so much to create.)
German theoretical physicist
Quantum chemistry
Some view the birth of quantum chemistry in the discovery of the
Still, skepticism remained as to the general power of quantum mechanics applied to complex chemical systems.[citation needed] The situation around 1930 is described by Paul Dirac:[99]
The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.
Hence the quantum mechanical methods developed in the 1930s and 1940s are often referred to as theoretical
In the 1940s many physicists turned from molecular or atomic physics to nuclear physics (like J. Robert Oppenheimer or Edward Teller). Glenn T. Seaborg was an American nuclear chemist best known for his work on isolating and identifying transuranium elements (those heavier than uranium). He shared the 1951 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Edwin Mattison McMillan for their independent discoveries of transuranium elements. Seaborgium was named in his honour, making him the only person, along with Albert Einstein and Yuri Oganessian, for whom a chemical element was named during his lifetime.
Molecular biology and biochemistry
By the mid 20th century, in principle, the integration of physics and chemistry was extensive, with chemical properties explained as the result of the
This heuristic approach triumphed in 1953 when
In the same year, the
In 1983
An important piece in the double helix puzzle was solved by one of Pauling's students
They used a centrifugation technique that sorted molecules according to differences in weight. Because nitrogen atoms are a component of DNA, they were labelled and therefore tracked in replication in bacteria.
Late 20th century
In 1970, John Pople developed the Gaussian program greatly easing computational chemistry calculations.[102] In 1971, Yves Chauvin offered an explanation of the reaction mechanism of olefin metathesis reactions.[103] In 1975, Karl Barry Sharpless and his group discovered stereoselective oxidation reactions including Sharpless epoxidation,[104][105] Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation,[106][107][108] and Sharpless oxyamination.[109][110][111] In 1985,
Mathematics and chemistry
Before the 20th century, chemistry was defined as the science of the nature of matter and its transformations. It was therefore distinct from physics which was not concerned with such dramatic transformation of matter. Moreover, in contrast to physics, chemistry remained predominantly a descriptive and empirical science until the end of the 19th century. Though they developed a consistent quantitative foundation based on notions of atomic and molecular weights, combining proportions, and thermodynamic quantities, chemists had less use of advanced mathematics.[120] Some even expressed reluctance about the use of mathematics within chemistry. For example, the philosopher Auguste Comte wrote in 1830:
Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry.... if mathematical analysis should ever hold a prominent place in chemistry – an aberration which is happily almost impossible – it would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science.
However, in the second part of the 19th century, the situation began to change as August Kekulé wrote in 1867:
I rather expect that we shall someday find a mathematico-mechanical explanation for what we now call atoms which will render an account of their properties.
Scope of chemistry
As understanding of the nature of matter has evolved, so too has the self-understanding of the science of chemistry by its practitioners. This continuing historical process of evaluation includes the categories, terms, aims and scope of chemistry. Additionally, the development of the social institutions and networks which support chemical enquiry are highly significant factors that enable the production, dissemination and application of chemical knowledge. (See Philosophy of chemistry)
Chemical industry
The later part of the nineteenth century saw a huge increase in the exploitation of
In the mid-twentieth century, control of the electronic structure of
See also
Histories and timelines
- Atomic theory
- Cupellation
- History of chromatography
- History of electrochemistry
- History of energy
- History of materials science
- History of molecular biology
- History of molecular theory
- History of physics
- History of science and technology
- History of the molecule
- History of the periodic table
- History of thermodynamics
- List of years in science
- Nobel Prize in chemistry
- Timeline of scientific discoveries
- Timeline of atomic and subatomic physics
- Timeline of chemical elements discoveries
- Timeline of chemistry
- Timeline of crystallography
- Timeline of historic inventions
- Timeline of materials technology
- Timeline of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and random processes
- The Chemical History of a Candle
- The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements (PBS film)
Notable chemists
listed chronologically:
- List of chemists
- Robert Boyle, 1627–1691
- Joseph Black, 1728–1799
- Joseph Priestley, 1733–1804
- Carl Wilhelm Scheele, 1742–1786
- Antoine Lavoisier, 1743–1794
- Alessandro Volta, 1745–1827
- Jacques Charles, 1746–1823
- Claude Louis Berthollet, 1748–1822
- Amedeo Avogadro, 1776–1856
- Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, 1778–1850
- Humphry Davy, 1778–1829
- Jöns Jacob Berzelius, inventor of modern chemical notation, 1779–1848
- Justus von Liebig, 1803–1873
- Louis Pasteur, 1822–1895
- Stanislao Cannizzaro, 1826–1910
- Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, 1829–1896
- Dmitri Mendeleev, 1834–1907
- Josiah Willard Gibbs, 1839–1903
- J. H. van 't Hoff, 1852–1911
- William Ramsay, 1852–1916
- Svante Arrhenius, 1859–1927
- Walther Nernst, 1864–1941
- Marie Curie, 1867–1934
- Gilbert N. Lewis, 1875–1946
- Otto Hahn, 1879–1968
- Irving Langmuir, 1881–1957
- Linus Pauling, 1901–1994
- Glenn T. Seaborg, 1912–1999
- Robert Burns Woodward, 1917–1979
- Frederick Sanger, 1918–2013
- Geoffrey Wilkinson, 1921–1996
- Rudolph A. Marcus, 1923–
- George Andrew Olah, 1926–2017
- Elias James Corey, 1928–
- Akira Suzuki, 1930–
- Richard F. Heck, 1931–2015
- Harold Kroto, 1939–2016
- Jean-Marie Lehn, 1939–
- Peter Atkins, 1940–
- Barry Sharpless, 1941–
- Richard Smalley, 1943–2005
- Jean-Pierre Sauvage, 1944–
Notes
- ^ Selected Classic Papers from the History of Chemistry
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- ^ ISBN 0-340-00312-X
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- ^ Neolithic Vinca was a metallurgical culture Archived 2017-09-19 at the Wayback Machine Stonepages from news sources November 2007
- ^ Will Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage:
"Something has been said about the chemical excellence of
Persians, and by the Persians from India." - ISBN 0-582-48598-3
- ISBN 0-901462-88-8
- ISBN 978-0-233-00202-6.
- ^ a b Will Durant (1935), Our Oriental Heritage:
"Two systems of
Vachaspati, like Newton, interpreted light as composed of minute particles emitted by substances and striking the eye." - ^ Simpson, David (29 June 2005). "Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE)". The Internet History of Philosophy. Retrieved 2007-01-09.
- ^ Lucretius. "de Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)". The Internet Classics Archive. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2007-01-09.
- ^ Holmyard, E.J. (1957). Alchemy. New York: Dover, 1990. pp. 48, 49.
- ^ Stanton J. Linden. The alchemy reader: from Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton Cambridge University Press. 2003. p.44
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- ^ Strathern, 2000. Page 79.
- ^ Holmyard, E.J. (1957). Alchemy. New York: Dover, 1990. pp. 15, 16.
- ^ William Royall Newman. Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the experimental origins of the scientific revolution. University of Chicago Press, 2006. p.xi
- ^ The History of Ancient Chemistry Archived 2015-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
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- ^ Darmstaedter, Ernst. "Liber Misericordiae Geber: Eine lateinische Übersetzung des gröβeren Kitâb l-raḥma", Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, 17/4, 1925, pp. 181–197; Berthelot, Marcellin. "Archéologie et Histoire des sciences", Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences de l'Institut de France, 49, 1906, pp. 308–363; see also Forster, Regula. "Jābir b. Ḥayyān", Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three.
- ^ Newman, William R. "New Light on the Identity of Geber", Sudhoffs Archiv, 1985, 69, pp. 76–90; Newman, William R. The Summa perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber: A critical edition, translation and study, Leiden: Brill, 1991, pp. 57–103. It has been argued by Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan that the pseudo-Geber works were actually translated into Latin from the Arabic (see Al-Hassan, Ahmad Y. "The Arabic Origin of the Summa and Geber Latin Works: A Refutation of Berthelot, Ruska, and Newman Based on Arabic Sources", in: Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan. Studies in al-Kimya': Critical Issues in Latin and Arabic Alchemy and Chemistry. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2009, pp. 53–104; also available online).
- JSTOR 2851429.
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Brock, William H. (1992). The Fontana History of Chemistry. London, England: Fontana Press. pp. 32–33. ISBN 978-0-00-686173-7.
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Brock, William H. (1992). The Fontana History of Chemistry. London, England: Fontana Press. ISBN 978-0-00-686173-7.
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- ^ "Robert Boyle". Archived from the original on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2008-11-04.
- OCLC 16986801. Archived from the original on April 2, 2011. Retrieved 17 April 2009.)
{{cite journal}}
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- ISBN 9780941901123.
- ^ "Carl Wilhelm Scheele". History of Gas Chemistry. Center for Microscale Gas Chemistry, Creighton University. 2005-09-11. Retrieved 2007-02-23.
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- ^ Lavoisier, Antoine (1743–1794) -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography, ScienceWorld
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Pullman, Bernard (2004). The Atom in the History of Human Thought. Reisinger, Axel. USA: Oxford University Press Inc. ISBN 978-0-19-511447-8.
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On page 157, Gay-Lussac mentions the unpublished findings of Charles: "Avant d'aller plus loin, je dois prévenir que quoique j'eusse reconnu un grand nombre de fois que les gaz oxigène, azote, hydrogène et acide carbonique, et l'air atmosphérique se dilatent également depuis 0° jusqu'a 80°, le cit. Charles avait remarqué depuis 15 ans la même propriété dans ces gaz ; mais n'avant jamais publié ses résultats, c'est par le plus grand hasard que je les ai connus." (Before going further, I should inform [you] that although I had recognized many times that the gases oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid [i.e., carbon dioxide], and atmospheric air also expand from 0° to 80°, citizen Charles had noticed 15 years ago the same property in these gases; but having never published his results, it is by the merest chance that I knew of them.) - ^ J. Dalton (1802) "Essay IV. On the expansion of elastic fluids by heat," Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, vol. 5, pt. 2, pages 595-602.
- ^ "Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac – Chemistry Encyclopedia – gas, number".
- ^ Annales de chimie. 88: 304. In French, seaweed that had been washed onto the shore was called "varec", "varech", or "vareck", whence the English word "wrack". Later, "varec" also referred to the ashes of such seaweed: The ashes were used as a source of iodine and salts of sodium and potassium.
- ^ Swain, Patricia A. (2005). "Bernard Courtois (1777–1838) famed for discovering iodine (1811), and his life in Paris from 1798" (PDF). Bulletin for the History of Chemistry. 30 (2): 103. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-14. Retrieved 2013-06-14.
- ^ a b Gay-Lussac, J. (1813). "Sur un nouvel acide formé avec la substance décourverte par M. Courtois". Annales de Chimie. 88: 311.
- ^ Gay-Lussac, J. (1813). "Sur la combination de l'iode avec d'oxigène". Annales de Chimie. 88: 319.
- ^ Gay-Lussac, J. (1814). "Mémoire sur l'iode". Annales de Chimie. 91: 5.
- ^ Davy, H. (1813). "Sur la nouvelle substance découverte par M. Courtois, dans le sel de Vareck". Annales de Chimie. 88: 322.
- S2CID 109845199.
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 6 April 2008
- ^ Keen, Robin (2005). Buttner, Johannes (ed.). The Life and Work of Friedrich Wöhler (1800–1882) (PDF). Bautz.
- ^ https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)62112-5/fulltext
- ^ a b "V. Markovnikov". natsci.parkland.edu. Retrieved 2022-11-29.
- ^ PMID 15221826.
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(help) - ^ O'Connor, J. J.; Robertson, E.F. (1997). "Josiah Willard Gibbs". MacTutor. School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ Weisstein, Eric W. (1996). "Boltzmann, Ludwig (1844–1906)". Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography. Wolfram Research Products. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
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(help) - ^ "Jacobus H. van 't Hoff: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1901". Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901–1921. Elsevier Publishing Company. 1966. Retrieved 2007-02-28.
- ^ Henry Louis Le Châtelier. Thomson Gale. 2005. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
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ignored (help) - ^ "Emil Fischer: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1902". Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901–1921. Elsevier Publishing Company. 1966. Retrieved 2007-02-28.
- ^ "History of Chemistry". Intensive General Chemistry. Columbia University Department of Chemistry Undergraduate Program. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ "Alfred Werner: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1913". Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901–1921. Elsevier Publishing Company. 1966. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ "Alfred Werner: The Nobel Prize in Physics 1911". Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901–1921. Elsevier Publishing Company. 1967. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ W. Heitler and F. London, Wechselwirkung neutraler Atome und Homöopolare Bindung nach der Quantenmechanik, Z. Physik, 44, 455 (1927).
- ^ P.A.M. Dirac, Quantum Mechanics of Many-Electron Systems, Proc. R. Soc. London, A 123, 714 (1929).
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- ^ Watson, J. and Crick, F., "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids" Nature, April 25, 1953, p 737–8
- ^ W. J. Hehre, W. A. Lathan, R. Ditchfield, M. D. Newton, and J. A. Pople, Gaussian 70 (Quantum Chemistry Program Exchange, Program No. 237, 1970).
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- ^ Blakeslee, Sandra (15 February 1994). "Race to Synthesize Cancer Drug Molecule Has Photo Finish". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
- J. Am. Chem. Soc.; 1994; 116(4); 1597–1598. DOI Abstract
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- ^ "Cornell and Wieman Share 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics". NIST News Release. National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2001. Archived from the original on 2007-06-10. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
- ISBN 978-0-12-813701-7.
References
- Selected classic papers from the history of chemistry
- Biographies of Chemists
- Eric R. Scerri, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, Oxford University Press, 2006.
Further reading
- Morris, Peter J. T.; Rocke, Alan, eds. (2022). A Cultural History of Chemistry. Volumes 1–6. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781474294928.
- Beretta, Marco, ed. (2022). A Cultural History Of Chemistry in Antiquity (Volume 1). London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4742-9453-9.
- Beretta, Marco, ed. (2022). A Cultural History Of Chemistry in Antiquity (Volume 1). London: Bloomsbury.
- Jensen, William B (2006). "Textbooks and the future of the history of chemistry as an academic discipline". Bulletin for the History of Chemistry. 3: 1–8.
- OCLC 977570829.
- OCLC 1149250811. (four volumes)
- ISBN 978-0226103792. (general overview of the history of alchemy and chemistry, with a focus on the relationship between the two; written in a highly accessible style)
- Rampling, Jennifer M (2017). "The Future of the History of Chemistry". Ambix. 64 (4): 295–300. PMID 29448901.
- Rampling, Jennifer M. (2020). The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226826547.
- Documentaries
- BBC (2010). Chemistry: A Volatile History.
External links
- ChemisLab – Chemists of the Past
- SHAC: Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry