History of chemistry

The 1871 periodic table constructed by Dmitri Mendeleev.

The periodic table is one of the most potent icons in
science, lying at the core of chemistry and embodying the
most fundamental principles of the field.

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 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, alchemy,

was unsuccessful in explaining the nature of
matter and its transformations. However, by
performing experiments and recording the
results, alchemists set the stage for modern
chemistry. The distinction began to emerge
when a clear differentiation was made
between chemistry and alchemy by Robert
Boyle in his work The Sceptical Chymist
(1661). While both alchemy and chemistry
are concerned with matter and its
transformations, chemists are seen as
applying scientific method to their work.

The history of chemistry is intertwined with

the history of thermodynamics, especially
through the work of Willard Gibbs.[1]

Ancient history
Early humans

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.[2][3]

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.[4]

Silver, copper, tin and meteoric iron can also

be found native, allowing a limited amount
of metalworking in ancient cultures.[5]
Egyptian weapons made from meteoric iron
in about 3000 BC were highly prized as
"daggers from Heaven".[6]
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 for 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.[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

Certain metals can be recovered from their

ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire:
notably tin, lead and (at a higher
temperature) copper. This process is known
as smelting. The first evidence of this
extractive metallurgy dates from the 6th and
5th millennia BC, and was found in the
archaeological sites of Majdanpek,
Yarmovac and Plocnik, all three in Serbia. To
date, the earliest copper smelting is found
at the Belovode site;[8] these examples
include a copper axe from 5500 BC
belonging to the Vinča culture.[9] Other signs
of early metals are found from the third
millennium BC in places like Palmela
(Portugal), Los Millares (Spain), and
Stonehenge (United Kingdom). However, as
often happens in the study of prehistoric
times, the ultimate beginnings cannot be
clearly defined and new discoveries are
ongoing.

Mining areas of the ancient Middle East. Boxes colors:

arsenic is in brown, copper in red, tin in grey, iron in
reddish brown, gold in yellow, silver in white and lead in
black. Yellow area stands for arsenic bronze, while grey
area stands for tin 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 alloy called bronze. This
was a major technological shift which
began the Bronze Age about 3500 BC. The
Bronze Age was a period in human cultural
development when the most advanced
metalworking (at least in systematic and
widespread use) included techniques for
smelting copper and tin from naturally
occurring outcroppings of copper ores, and
then smelting those ores to cast bronze.
These naturally occurring ores typically
included arsenic as a common impurity.
Copper/tin ores are rare, as reflected in the
absence of tin bronzes in western Asia
before 3000 BC.

After the Bronze Age, the history of

metallurgy was marked by armies seeking
better weaponry. Countries in Eurasia
prospered when they made the superior
alloys, which, in turn, made better armor and
better weapons. Significant progress in
metallurgy and alchemy was made in
ancient India.[10]

Iron Age

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.[6][11]

The Iron Age refers to the advent of iron

working (ferrous metallurgy). Historical
developments in ferrous metallurgy can be
found in a wide variety of past cultures and
civilizations. These include the ancient and
medieval kingdoms and empires of the
Middle East and Near East, ancient Iran,
ancient Egypt, ancient Nubia, and Anatolia
(Turkey), Ancient Nok, Carthage, the Greeks
and Romans of ancient Europe, medieval
Europe, ancient and medieval China, ancient
and medieval India, ancient and medieval
Japan, amongst others. Many applications,
practices, and devices associated with or
involved in metallurgy were established in
ancient China, such as the innovation of the
blast furnace, cast iron, hydraulic-powered
trip hammers, and double-acting piston
bellows.[12][13]

Classical antiquity and atomism

Democritus, Greek philosopher of atomistic school.

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 classical elements that make up all
the various substances in nature.
Substances like air, water, and soil/earth,
energy forms, such as fire and light, and
more abstract concepts such as thoughts,
aether, and heaven, were common in
ancient civilizations even in the absence of
any cross-fertilization: for example ancient
Greek, Indian, Mayan, and Chinese
philosophies all considered air, water, earth
and fire as primary elements.

Ancient world

Around 420 BC, Empedocles stated that all

matter is made up of four elemental
substances: earth, fire, air and water. The
early theory of atomism can be traced back
to ancient Greece and ancient India.[14]
Greek atomism dates back to the Greek
philosopher Democritus, who declared that
matter is composed of indivisible and
indestructible particles called "atomos"
around 380 BC. Leucippus also declared
that atoms were the most indivisible part of
matter. This coincided with a similar
declaration by Indian philosopher Kanada in
his Vaisheshika sutras around the same
time period.[14] In much the same fashion he
discussed the existence of gases. What
Kanada declared by sutra, Democritus
declared by philosophical musing. Both
suffered from a lack of empirical data.
Without scientific proof, the existence of
atoms was easy to deny. Aristotle opposed
the existence of atoms in 330 BC. Earlier, in
380 BC, a Greek text attributed to Polybus
argued that the human body is composed of
four humours. Around 300 BC, Epicurus
postulated a universe of indestructible
atoms in which man himself is responsible
for achieving a balanced life.
With the goal of explaining Epicurean
philosophy to a Roman audience, the
Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius[15]
wrote De rerum natura (The Nature of
Things)[16] 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.

Much of the early development of

purification methods is described by Pliny
the Elder in his Naturalis Historia. He tried to
explain those methods, as well as making
acute observations of the state of many
minerals.
Medieval alchemy

Seventeenth-century alchemical emblem showing the four

Classical elements in the corners of the image, alongside
the tria prima on the central triangle.

The elemental system used in medieval

alchemy was developed primarily by the
Persian-Arab alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān
and was rooted in the classical elements of
Greek tradition.[17] His system consisted of
the four Aristotelian elements of air, earth,
fire, and water in addition to two
philosophical elements: sulphur,
characterizing the principle of
combustibility, "the stone which burns"; and
mercury, characterizing the principle of
metallic properties. They were seen by early
alchemists as idealized expressions of
irreducible components of the universe[18]
and are of larger consideration within
philosophical alchemy.

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).[19]

The philosopher's stone

"The Alchemist", by Sir William Douglas, 1855

Alchemy is defined by the Hermetic quest
for the philosopher's stone, the study of
which is steeped in symbolic mysticism, and
differs greatly from modern science.
Alchemists toiled to make transformations
on an esoteric (spiritual) and/or exoteric
(practical) level.[20] It was the
protoscientific, exoteric aspects of alchemy
that contributed heavily to the evolution of
chemistry in Greco-Roman Egypt, in the
Islamic Golden Age, and then in Europe.
Alchemy and chemistry share an interest in
the composition and properties of matter,
and until the 18th century they were not
separate disciplines. The term chymistry
has been used to describe the blend of
alchemy and chemistry that existed before
that time.[21]
The earliest Western alchemists, who lived
in the first centuries of the common era,
invented chemical apparatus. The bain-
marie, or water bath, is named for Mary the
Jewess. Her work also gives the first
descriptions of the tribikos and kerotakis.[22]
Cleopatra the Alchemist described furnaces
and has been credited with the invention of
the alembic.[23] Later, the experimental
framework established by Jabir ibn Hayyan
influenced alchemists as the discipline
migrated through the Islamic world, then to
Europe in the 12th century CE.

During the Renaissance, exoteric alchemy

remained popular in the form of Paracelsian
iatrochemistry, while spiritual alchemy
flourished, realigned to its Platonic,
Hermetic, and Gnostic roots. Consequently,
the symbolic quest for the philosopher's
stone was not superseded by scientific
advances, and was still the domain of
respected scientists and doctors until the
early 18th century. Early modern alchemists
who are renowned for their scientific
contributions include Jan Baptist van
Helmont, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton.

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 Geoffery Chaucer's
Canon's Yeoman's Tale or
audiences of Ben Jonson's The
Alchemist were able to construe
it sufficiently to laugh at it.[24]

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.[25]

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.
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.

Alchemy in the Islamic world

 

Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber), a Persian-Arab alchemist whose

experimental research laid the foundations of chemistry.

In the Islamic World, the Muslims were

translating the works of the ancient Greeks
and Egyptians into Arabic and were
experimenting with scientific ideas.[26] The
development of the modern scientific
method was slow and arduous, but an early
scientific method for chemistry began
emerging among early Muslim chemists,
beginning with the 9th-century chemist Jābir
ibn Hayyān (known as "Geber" in Europe),
who is sometimes regarded as "the father of
chemistry".[27][28][29][30] He introduced a
systematic and experimental approach to
scientific research based in the laboratory,
in contrast to the ancient Greek and
Egyptian alchemists whose works were
largely allegorical and often unintelligble.[31]
He also invented and named the alembic (al-
anbiq), chemically analyzed many chemical
substances, composed lapidaries,
distinguished between alkalis and acids,
and manufactured hundreds of drugs.[32] He
also refined the theory of five classical
elements into the theory of seven
alchemical elements after identifying
mercury and sulfur as chemical
elements.[33]
Among other influential Muslim chemists,
Abū al-Rayhān al-Bīrūnī,[34] Avicenna[35] and
Al-Kindi refuted the theories of alchemy,
particularly the theory of the transmutation
of metals; and al-Tusi described a version of
the conservation of mass, noting that a
body of matter is able to change but is not
able to disappear.[36] Rhazes refuted
Aristotle's theory of four classical elements
for the first time and set up the firm
foundations of modern chemistry, using the
laboratory in the modern sense, designing
and describing more than twenty
instruments, many parts of which are still in
use today, such as a crucible, cucurbit or
retort for distillation, and the head of a still
with a delivery tube (ambiq, Latin alembic),
and various types of furnace or stove.
For practitioners in Europe, alchemy
became an intellectual pursuit after early
Arabic alchemy became available through
Latin translation, and over time, they
improved. Paracelsus (1493–1541), for
example, rejected the 4-elemental theory
and with only a vague understanding of his
chemicals and medicines, formed a hybrid
of alchemy and science in what was to be
called iatrochemistry. Paracelsus was not
perfect in making his experiments truly
scientific. For example, as an extension of
his theory that new compounds could be
made by combining mercury with sulfur, he
once made what he thought was "oil of
sulfur". This was actually dimethyl ether,
which had neither mercury nor sulfur.
17th and 18th centuries: Early
chemistry

Agricola, author of De re metallica

Workroom, from De re metallica, 1556, Chemical Heritage

Foundation
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 Georg Agricola (1494–1555), who
published his great work De re metallica in
1556. His work describes the highly
developed and complex processes of
mining metal ores, metal extraction and
metallurgy of the time. His approach
removed the mysticism associated with the
subject, creating the practical base upon
which others could build. The work
describes the many kinds of furnace used to
smelt ore, and stimulated interest in
minerals and their composition. It is no
coincidence that he gives numerous
references to the earlier author, Pliny the
Elder and his Naturalis Historia. Agricola has
been described as the "father of
metallurgy".[37]

In 1605, Sir Francis Bacon published The

Proficience and Advancement of Learning,
which contains a description of what would
later be known as the scientific method.[38]
In 1605, Michal Sedziwój publishes the
alchemical treatise A New Light of Alchemy
which proposed the existence of the "food
of life" within air, much later recognized as
oxygen. In 1615 Jean Beguin published the
Tyrocinium Chymicum, an early chemistry
textbook, and in it draws the first-ever
chemical equation.[39] In 1637 René
Descartes publishes Discours de la
méthode, which contains an outline of the
scientific method.
The Dutch chemist Jan Baptist van
Helmont's work Ortus medicinae was
published posthumously in 1648; the book
is cited by some as a major transitional
work between alchemy and chemistry, and
as an important influence on Robert Boyle.
The book contains the results of numerous
experiments and establishes an early
version of the law of conservation of mass.
Working during the time just after
Paracelsus and iatrochemistry, Jan Baptist
van Helmont suggested that there are
insubstantial substances other than air and
coined a name for them - "gas", from the
Greek word chaos. In addition to introducing
the word "gas" into the vocabulary of
scientists, van Helmont conducted several
experiments involving gases. Jan Baptist
van Helmont is also remembered today
largely for his ideas on spontaneous
generation and his 5-year tree experiment,
as well as being considered the founder of
pneumatic chemistry.

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle, one of the co-founders of modern chemistry

through his use of proper experimentation, which further
separated chemistry from alchemy
 

Title page from The sceptical chymist, 1661, Chemical

Heritage Foundation

Anglo-Irish chemist Robert Boyle (1627–

1691) is considered to have refined the
modern scientific method for alchemy and
to have separated chemistry further from
alchemy.[40] Although his research clearly
has its roots in the alchemical tradition,
Boyle is largely regarded today as the first
modern chemist, and therefore one of the
founders of modern chemistry, and one of
the pioneers of modern experimental
scientific method. Although Boyle was not
the original discoverer, he is best known for
Boyle's law, which he presented in 1662:[41]
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.[42][43]

Boyle is also credited for his landmark

publication The Sceptical Chymist in 1661,
which is seen as a cornerstone book in the
field of chemistry. In the work, Boyle
presents his hypothesis that every
phenomenon was the result of collisions of
particles in motion. Boyle appealed to
chemists to experiment and asserted that
experiments denied the limiting of chemical
elements to only the classic four: earth, fire,
air, and water. He also pleaded that
chemistry should cease to be subservient to
medicine or to alchemy, and rise to the
status of a science. Importantly, he
advocated a rigorous approach to scientific
experiment: he believed all theories must be
proved experimentally before being
regarded as true. The work contains some
of the earliest modern ideas of atoms,
molecules, and chemical reaction, and
marks the beginning of the history of
modern chemistry.

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. He also performed numerous
investigations with an air pump, and noted
that the mercury fell as air was pumped out.
He also observed that pumping the air out
of a container would extinguish a flame and
kill small animals placed inside. Boyle
helped to lay the foundations for the
Chemical Revolution with his mechanical
corpuscular philosophy.[44] Boyle repeated
the tree experiment of van Helmont, and
was the first to use indicators which
changed colors with acidity.

Development and dismantling of

phlogiston
phlogiston

Joseph Priestley, co-discoverer of the element oxygen,

which he called "dephlogisticated air"

In 1702, German chemist Georg Stahl

coined the name "phlogiston" for the
substance believed to be released in the
process of burning. Around 1735, Swedish
chemist Georg Brandt analyzed a dark blue
pigment found in copper ore. Brandt
demonstrated that the pigment contained a
new element, later named cobalt. In 1751, a
Swedish chemist and pupil of Stahl's named
Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, identified an impurity
in copper ore as a separate metallic
element, which he named nickel. Cronstedt
is one of the founders of modern
mineralogy.[45] Cronstedt also discovered
the mineral scheelite in 1751, which he
named tungsten, meaning "heavy stone" in
Swedish.

In 1754, Scottish chemist Joseph Black

isolated carbon dioxide, which he called
"fixed air".[46] In 1757, Louis Claude Cadet de
Gassicourt, while investigating arsenic
compounds, creates Cadet's fuming liquid,
later discovered to be cacodyl oxide,
considered to be the first synthetic
organometallic compound.[47] In 1758,
Joseph Black formulated the concept of
latent heat to explain the thermochemistry
of phase changes.[48] In 1766, English
chemist Henry Cavendish isolated hydrogen,
which he called "inflammable air".
Cavendish discovered hydrogen as a
colorless, odourless gas that burns and can
form an explosive mixture with air, and
published a paper on the production of
water by burning inflammable air (that is,
hydrogen) in dephlogisticated air (now
known to be oxygen), the latter a constituent
of atmospheric air (phlogiston theory).

In 1773, Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm

Scheele discovered oxygen, which he called
"fire air", but did not immediately publish his
achievement.[49] In 1774, English chemist
Joseph Priestley independently isolated
oxygen in its gaseous state, calling it
"dephlogisticated air", and published his
work before Scheele.[50][51] During his
lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific
reputation rested on his invention of soda
water, his writings on electricity, and his
discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most
famous being what Priestley dubbed
"dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). However,
Priestley's determination to defend
phlogiston theory and to reject what would
become the chemical revolution eventually
left him isolated within the scientific
community.

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

A voltaic pile on display in the Tempio Voltiano (the Volta

Temple) near Volta's home in Como.
Temple) near Volta's home in Como.

Italian physicist Alessandro Volta

constructed a device for accumulating a
large charge by a series of inductions and
groundings. He investigated the 1780s
discovery "animal electricity" by Luigi
Galvani, and found that the electric current
was generated from the contact of
dissimilar metals, and that the frog leg was
only acting as a detector. Volta
demonstrated in 1794 that when two metals
and brine-soaked cloth or cardboard are
arranged in a circuit they produce an electric
current.

In 1800, Volta stacked several pairs of

alternating copper (or silver) and zinc discs
(electrodes) separated by cloth or
cardboard soaked in brine (electrolyte) to
increase the electrolyte conductivity.[55]
When the top and bottom contacts were
connected by a wire, an electric current
flowed through the voltaic pile and the
connecting wire. Thus, Volta is credited with
constructing the first electrical battery to
produce electricity. Volta's method of
stacking round plates of copper and zinc
separated by disks of cardboard moistened
with salt solution was termed a voltaic pile.

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 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

Portrait of Monsieur Lavoisier and his wife, by Jacques-

Louis David

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. Nevertheless, the weight gained
was lost from the air. Thus, in 1789, he
established the Law of Conservation of
Mass, which is also called "Lavoisier's
Law."[57]

The world's first ice-calorimeter, used in the winter of

1782-83, by Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace,
to determine the heat involved in various chemical
changes; calculations which were based on Joseph
changes; calculations which were based on Joseph
Black's prior discovery of latent heat. These experiments
mark the foundation of thermochemistry.

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). 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. Lomonosov 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 theory of
chemical equilibria via the mechanism of
reverse chemical reactions.

Traité élémentaire de chimie

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, believing 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.

While 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 knowledge
from many of the chemical advances
happening outside of his lab.[58]
Furthermore, Mme. Lavoisier kept records of
Lavoisier's work and ensured that his works
were published.[58] 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 [58] Her edits and
contributions led to Lavoisier's refutation of
the theory of phlogiston.

Lavoisier made many fundamental

contributions to the science of chemistry.
Following Lavoisier's 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. Lavoisier
was beheaded during the French Revolution.

19th century
In 1802, French American chemist and
industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, who
learned manufacture of gunpowder and
explosives under Antoine Lavoisier, founded
a gunpowder manufacturer in Delaware
known as E. I. du Pont de Nemours and
Company. The French Revolution forced his
family to move to the United States where
du Pont started a gunpowder mill on the
Brandywine River in Delaware. Wanting to
make the best powder possible, du Pont
was vigilant about the quality of the
materials he used. For 32 years, du Pont
served as president of E. I. du Pont de
Nemours and Company, which eventually
grew into one of the largest and most
successful companies in America.

Throughout the 19th century, chemistry was

divided between those who followed the
atomic theory of John Dalton and those who
did not, such as Wilhelm Ostwald and Ernst
Mach.[59] Although such proponents of the
atomic theory as Amedeo Avogadro and
Ludwig Boltzmann made great advances in
explaining the behavior of gases, this
dispute was not finally settled until Jean
Perrin's experimental investigation of
Einstein's atomic explanation of Brownian
motion in the first decade of the 20th
century.[59]

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. These
findings, like those of Dalton's combining
ratios, were early clues to the atomic nature
of matter.

John Dalton

John Dalton is remembered for his work on partial

pressures in gases, color blindness, and atomic theory

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 atomic

theory in 1803 which stated that all matter
was composed of small indivisible particles
termed atoms, atoms of a given element
possess unique characteristics and weight,
and three types of atoms exist: simple
(elements), compound (simple molecules),
and complex (complex molecules). In 1808,
Dalton first published New System of
Chemical Philosophy (1808-1827), in which
he outlined the first modern scientific
description of the atomic theory. This work
identified chemical elements as a specific
type of atom, therefore rejecting Newton's
theory of chemical affinities.

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 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

Jöns Jacob Berzelius, the chemist who worked out the

modern technique of chemical formula notation and is
considered one of the fathers of modern chemistry

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
insure 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 set to 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 large numbers of
compounds. The results strongly confirmed
Proust's Law of Definite Proportions. In his
weights, he used oxygen as a standard,
setting its weight equal to exactly 100. He
also measured the weights of 43 elements.
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 chemical symbols and notation
with his 1808 publishing of Lärbok i Kemien,
in which elements are abbreviated by one or
two letters to make a distinct abbreviation
from their Latin name. This system of
chemical notation—in which the elements
were given simple written labels, such as O
for oxygen, or Fe for iron, with proportions
noted by numbers—is the same basic
system used today. The only difference is
that instead of the subscript number used
today (e.g., H2O), Berzelius used a
superscript (H2O). Berzelius is credited with
identifying the chemical elements silicon,
selenium, thorium, and cerium. Students
working in Berzelius's laboratory also
discovered lithium and vanadium.

Berzelius developed the radical theory of

chemical combination, which holds that
reactions occur as stable groups of atoms
called radicals are exchanged between
molecules. He believed that salts are
compounds of an acid and bases, and
discovered that the anions in acids would be
attracted to a positive electrode (the anode),
whereas the cations in a base would be
attracted to a negative electrode (the
cathode). Berzelius did not believe in the
Vitalism Theory, but instead in a regulative
force which produced organization of
tissues in an organism. Berzelius is also
credited with originating the chemical terms
"catalysis", "polymer", "isomer", and
"allotrope", although his original definitions
differ dramatically from modern usage. For
example, he coined the term "polymer" in
1833 to describe organic compounds which
shared identical empirical formulas but
which differed in overall molecular weight,
the larger of the compounds being
described as "polymers" of the smallest. By
this long superseded, pre-structural
definition, glucose (C6H12O6) was viewed as
a polymer of formaldehyde (CH2O).

New elements and gas laws

 
Humphry Davy, the discover of several alkali and alkaline
earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of

the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine.

English chemist Humphry Davy was a

pioneer in the field of electrolysis, using
Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile to split up
common compounds and thus isolate a
series of new elements. He went on to
electrolyse molten salts and discovered
several new metals, especially sodium and
potassium, highly reactive elements known
as the alkali metals. Potassium, the first
metal that was isolated by electrolysis, was
discovered in 1807 by Davy, who derived it
from caustic potash (KOH). Before the 19th
century, no distinction was made between
potassium and sodium. Sodium was first
isolated by Davy in the same year by
passing an electric current through molten
sodium hydroxide (NaOH). When Davy heard
that Berzelius and Pontin prepared calcium
amalgam by electrolyzing lime in mercury,
he tried it himself. Davy was successful, and
discovered calcium in 1808 by electrolyzing
a mixture of lime and mercuric oxide.[62][63]
He worked with electrolysis throughout his
life and, in 1808, he isolated magnesium,
strontium[64] and barium.[65]

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.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, who stated that the ratio

between the volumes of the reactant gases and the
products can be expressed in simple whole numbers.

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 "Gay-Lussac's law" or the
"Law of Combining Volumes". With his
fellow professor at the École Polytechnique,
Louis Jacques Thénard, Gay-Lussac also
participated in early electrochemical
research, investigating the elements
discovered by its means. Among other
achievements, they decomposed boric acid
by using fused potassium, thus discovering
the element boron. The two also took part in
contemporary debates that modified
Lavoisier's definition of acids and furthered
his program of analyzing organic
compounds for their oxygen and hydrogen
content.

The element iodine was discovered by

French chemist Bernard Courtois in
1811.[70][71] Courtois gave samples to his
friends, Charles Bernard Desormes (1777–
1862) and Nicolas Clément (1779–1841), to
continue research. He also gave some of
the substance to Gay-Lussac and to
physicist André-Marie Ampère. On
December 6, 1813, Gay-Lussac announced
that the new substance was either an
element or a compound of oxygen.[72][73][74]
It was Gay-Lussac who suggested the name
"iode", from the Greek word ιώδες (iodes)
for violet (because of the color of iodine
vapor).[70][72] Ampère had given some of his
sample to Humphry Davy. Davy did some
experiments on the substance and noted its
similarity to chlorine.[75] Davy sent a letter
dated December 10 to the Royal Society of
London stating that he had identified a new
element.[76] Arguments erupted between
Davy and Gay-Lussac over who identified
iodine first, but both scientists
acknowledged Courtois as the first to
isolate the element.

In 1815, Humphry Davy invented the Davy

lamp, which allowed miners within coal
mines to work safely in the presence of
flammable gases. There had been many
mining explosions caused by firedamp or
methane often ignited by open flames of the
lamps then used by miners. Davy conceived
of using an iron gauze to enclose a lamp's
flame, and so prevent the methane burning
inside the lamp from passing out to the
general atmosphere. Although the idea of
the safety lamp had already been
demonstrated by William Reid Clanny and by
the then unknown (but later very famous)
engineer George Stephenson, Davy's use of
wire gauze to prevent the spread of flame
was used by many other inventors in their
later designs. There was some discussion
as to whether Davy had discovered the
principles behind his lamp without the help
of the work of Smithson Tennant, but it was
generally agreed that the work of both men
had been independent. Davy refused to
patent the lamp, and its invention led to him
being awarded the Rumford medal in
1816.[77]

 
Amedeo Avogadro, who postulated that, under controlled
conditions of temperature and pressure, equal volumes of
gases contain an equal number of molecules. This is
known as Avogadro's law.

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 Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856),
who hypothesized that equal volumes of
gases at the same temperature and
pressure contain equal numbers of
molecules, from which it followed that
relative molecular weights of any two gases
are the same as the ratio of the densities of
the two gases under the same conditions of
temperature and pressure. Avogadro also
reasoned that simple gases were not
formed of solitary atoms but were instead
compound molecules of two or more
atoms. Thus Avogadro was able to
overcome the difficulty that Dalton and
others had encountered when Gay-Lussac
reported that above 100 °C the volume of
water vapor was twice the volume of the
oxygen used to form it. According to
Avogadro, the molecule of oxygen had split
into two atoms in the course of forming
water vapor.

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 Alexander
Williamson in England, Charles Gerhardt and
Charles-Adolphe Wurtz in France, and
August Kekulé in Germany, began to
advocate reforming theoretical chemistry to
make it consistent with Avogadrian theory.

Wöhler and the vitalism debate

Structural formula of urea

In 1825, Friedrich Wöhler and Justus von
Liebig performed the first confirmed
discovery and explanation of isomers,
earlier named by Berzelius. Working with
cyanic acid and fulminic acid, they correctly
deduced that isomerism was caused by
differing arrangements of atoms within a
molecular structure. In 1827, William Prout
classified biomolecules into their modern
groupings: carbohydrates, proteins and
lipids. After the nature of combustion was
settled, a dispute about vitalism and the
essential distinction between organic and
inorganic substances began. The vitalism
question was revolutionized in 1828 when
Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea, thereby
establishing that organic compounds could
be produced from inorganic starting
materials and disproving the theory of
vitalism.

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 mauve, magenta,
and other synthetic dyes, as well as the
widely used drug aspirin. The discovery of
the artificial synthesis of urea contributed
greatly to the theory of isomerism, as the
empirical chemical formulas for urea and
ammonium cyanate are identical (see
Wöhler synthesis). In 1832, Friedrich Wöhler
and Justus von Liebig discovered and
explained functional groups and radicals in
relation to organic chemistry, as well as first
synthesizing benzaldehyde. Liebig, a
German chemist, made major contributions
to agricultural and biological chemistry, and
worked on the organization of organic
chemistry. Liebig is considered the "father
of the fertilizer industry" for his discovery of
nitrogen as an essential plant nutrient, and
his formulation of the Law of the Minimum
which described the effect of individual
nutrients on crops.

Mid-1800s

In 1840, Germain Hess proposed Hess's law,

an early statement of the law of
conservation of energy, which establishes
that energy changes in a chemical process
depend only on the states of the starting
and product materials and not on the
specific pathway taken between the two
states. In 1847, Hermann Kolbe obtained
acetic acid from completely inorganic
sources, further disproving vitalism. In 1848,
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
(commonly known as Lord Kelvin)
established the concept of absolute zero,
the temperature at which all molecular
motion ceases. In 1849, Louis Pasteur
discovered that the racemic form of tartaric
acid is a mixture of the levorotatory and
dextrotatory forms, thus clarifying the
nature of optical rotation and advancing the
field of stereochemistry.[78] In 1852, August
Beer proposed Beer's law, which explains
the relationship between the composition of
a mixture and the amount of light it will
absorb. Based partly on earlier work by
Pierre Bouguer and Johann Heinrich
Lambert, it established the analytical
technique known as spectrophotometry.[79]
In 1855, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. pioneered
methods of petroleum cracking, which
made the entire modern petrochemical
industry possible.[80]

Formulas of acetic acid given by August Kekulé in 1861.

Avogadro's hypothesis began to gain broad

appeal among chemists only after his
compatriot and fellow scientist Stanislao
Cannizzaro demonstrated its value in 1858,
two years after Avogadro's death.
Cannizzaro's chemical interests had
originally centered on natural products and
on reactions of aromatic compounds; in
1853 he discovered that when benzaldehyde
is treated with concentrated base, both
benzoic acid and benzyl alcohol are
produced—a phenomenon known today as
the Cannizzaro reaction. In his 1858
pamphlet, Cannizzaro showed that a
complete return to the ideas of Avogadro
could be used to construct a consistent and
robust theoretical structure that fit nearly all
of the available empirical evidence. For
instance, he pointed to evidence that
suggested that not all elementary gases
consist of two atoms per molecule—some
were monatomic, most were diatomic, and a
few were even more complex.

Another point of contention had been the

formulas for compounds of the alkali metals
(such as sodium) and the alkaline earth
metals (such as calcium), which, in view of
their striking chemical analogies, most
chemists had wanted to assign to the same
formula type. Cannizzaro argued that
placing these metals in different categories
had the beneficial result of eliminating
certain anomalies when using their physical
properties to deduce atomic weights.
Unfortunately, Cannizzaro's pamphlet was
published initially only in Italian and had
little immediate impact. The real
breakthrough came with an international
chemical congress held in the German town
of Karlsruhe in September 1860, at which
most of the leading European chemists
were present. The Karlsruhe Congress had
been arranged by Kekulé, Wurtz, and a few
others who shared Cannizzaro's sense of
the direction chemistry should go. Speaking
in French (as everyone there did),
Cannizzaro's eloquence and logic made an
indelible impression on the assembled
body. Moreover, his friend Angelo Pavesi
distributed Cannizzaro's pamphlet to
attendees at the end of the meeting; more
than one chemist later wrote of the decisive
impression the reading of this document
provided. For instance, Lothar Meyer later
wrote that on reading Cannizzaro's paper,
"The scales seemed to fall from my
eyes."[81] Cannizzaro thus played a crucial
role in winning the battle for reform. The
system advocated by him, and soon
thereafter adopted by most leading
chemists, is substantially identical to what
is still used today.

Perkin, Crookes, and Nobel

In 1856, Sir William Henry Perkin, age 18,

given a challenge by his professor, August
Wilhelm von Hofmann, sought to synthesize
quinine, the anti-malaria drug, from coal tar.
In one attempt, Perkin oxidized aniline using
potassium dichromate, whose toluidine
impurities reacted with the aniline and
yielded a black solid—suggesting a "failed"
organic synthesis. Cleaning the flask with
alcohol, Perkin noticed purple portions of
the solution: a byproduct of the attempt was
the first synthetic dye, known as mauveine
or Perkin's mauve. Perkin's discovery is the
foundation of the dye synthesis industry,
one of the earliest successful chemical
industries.

German chemist August Kekulé von

Stradonitz's most important single
contribution was his structural theory of
organic composition, outlined in two articles
published in 1857 and 1858 and treated in
great detail in the pages of his
extraordinarily popular Lehrbuch der
organischen Chemie ("Textbook of Organic
Chemistry"), the first installment of which
appeared in 1859 and gradually extended to
four volumes. Kekulé argued that tetravalent
carbon atoms - that is, carbon forming
exactly four chemical bonds - could link
together to form what he called a "carbon
chain" or a "carbon skeleton," to which other
atoms with other valences (such as
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and chlorine)
could join. He was convinced that it was
possible for the chemist to specify this
detailed molecular architecture for at least
the simpler organic compounds known in
his day. Kekulé was not the only chemist to
make such claims in this era. The Scottish
chemist Archibald Scott Couper published a
substantially similar theory nearly
simultaneously, and the Russian chemist
Aleksandr Butlerov did much to clarify and
expand structure theory. However, it was
predominantly Kekulé's ideas that prevailed
in the chemical community.

A Crookes tube (2 views): light and dark. Electrons travel

in straight lines from the cathode (left), as evidenced by
the shadow cast from the Maltese cross on the
fluorescence of the righthand end. The anode is at the
bottom wire.

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, Alexander Parkes exhibited

Parkesine, one of the earliest synthetic
polymers, at the International Exhibition in
London. This discovery formed the
foundation of the modern plastics industry.
In 1864, Cato Maximilian Guldberg and
Peter Waage, building on Claude Louis
Berthollet's ideas, proposed the law of mass
action. In 1865, Johann Josef Loschmidt
determined the exact number of molecules
in a mole, later named Avogadro's number.

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. Today, the large
majority of known organic compounds are
aromatic, and all of them contain at least
one hexagonal benzene ring of the sort that
Kekulé advocated. 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

 
Dmitri Mendeleev, responsible for organizing the known
chemical elements in a 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
Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois,
who published the telluric helix, an early,
three-dimensional version of the periodic
table of the elements in 1862, John
Newlands, who proposed the law of octaves
(a precursor to the periodic law) in 1864,
and Lothar Meyer, who developed an early
version of the periodic table with 28
elements organized by valence in 1864.
Mendeleev's table did not include any of the
noble gases, however, which had not yet
been discovered. Gradually the periodic law
and table became the framework for a great
part of chemical theory. By the time
Mendeleev died in 1907, he enjoyed
international recognition and had received
distinctions and awards from many
countries.

In 1873, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff and

Joseph Achille Le Bel, working
independently, developed a model of
chemical bonding that explained the
chirality experiments of Pasteur and
provided a physical cause for optical activity
in chiral compounds.[82] van 't Hoff's
publication, called Voorstel tot Uitbreiding
der Tegenwoordige in de Scheikunde
gebruikte Structuurformules in de Ruimte,
etc. (Proposal for the development of 3-
dimensional chemical structural formulae)
and consisting of twelve pages text and one
page diagrams, gave the impetus to the
development of stereochemistry. The
concept of the "asymmetrical carbon atom",
dealt with in this publication, supplied an
explanation of the occurrence of numerous
isomers, inexplicable by means of the then
current structural formulae. At the same
time he pointed out the existence of
relationship between optical activity and the
presence of an asymmetrical carbon atom.

Josiah Willard Gibbs

J. Willard Gibbs formulated a concept of thermodynamic

equilibrium of a system in terms of energy and entropy. He
equilibrium of a system in terms of energy and entropy. He
also did extensive work on chemical equilibrium, and
equilibria between phases.

American mathematical physicist J. Willard

Gibbs's work on the applications of
thermodynamics was instrumental in
transforming physical chemistry into a
rigorous deductive science. During the years
from 1876 to 1878, Gibbs worked on the
principles of thermodynamics, applying
them to the complex processes involved in
chemical reactions. He discovered the
concept of chemical potential, or the "fuel"
that makes chemical reactions work. In
1876 he published his most famous
contribution, "On the Equilibrium of
Heterogeneous Substances", a compilation
of his work on thermodynamics and
physical chemistry which laid out the
concept of free energy to explain the
physical basis of chemical equilibria.[83] In
these essays were the beginnings of Gibbs’
theories of phases of matter: he considered
each state of matter a phase, and each
substance a component. Gibbs took all of
the variables involved in a chemical reaction
- temperature, pressure, energy, volume, and
entropy - and included them in one simple
equation known as Gibbs' phase rule.

Within this paper was perhaps his most

outstanding contribution, the introduction of
the concept 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.[84] 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 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

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).

In 1883, Svante Arrhenius developed an ion

theory to explain conductivity in
electrolytes.[85] In 1884, Jacobus Henricus
van 't Hoff published Études de Dynamique
chimique (Studies in Dynamic Chemistry), a
seminal study on chemical kinetics.[86] 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.[87]

In 1884, Hermann Emil Fischer proposed the

structure of purine, a key structure in many
biomolecules, which he later synthesized in
1898. He also began work on the chemistry
of glucose and related sugars.[88] In 1885,
Eugene Goldstein named the cathode ray,
later discovered to be composed of
electrons, and the canal ray, later discovered
to be positive hydrogen ions that had been
stripped of their electrons in a cathode ray
tube; these would later be named
protons.[89] The year 1885 also saw the
publishing of J. H. van 't Hoff's L'Équilibre
chimique dans les Systèmes gazeux ou
dissous à I'État dilué (Chemical equilibria in
gaseous systems or strongly diluted
solutions), which dealt with this theory of
dilute solutions. Here he demonstrated that
the "osmotic pressure" in solutions which
are sufficiently dilute is proportionate to the
concentration and the absolute temperature
so that this pressure can be represented by
a formula which only deviates from the
formula for gas pressure by a coefficient i.
He also determined the value of i by various
methods, for example by means of the
vapor pressure and François-Marie Raoult's
results on the lowering of the freezing point.
Thus van 't Hoff was able to prove that
thermodynamic laws are not only valid for
gases, but also for dilute solutions. His
pressure laws, given general validity by the
electrolytic dissociation theory of Arrhenius
(1884-1887) - the first foreigner who came
to work with him in Amsterdam (1888) - are
considered the most comprehensive and
important in the realm of natural sciences.
In 1893, Alfred Werner discovered the
octahedral structure of cobalt complexes,
thus establishing the field of coordination
chemistry.[90]

Ramsay's discovery of the noble

gases

The most celebrated discoveries of Scottish

chemist William Ramsay were made in
inorganic chemistry. Ramsay was intrigued
by the British physicist John Strutt, 3rd
Baron Rayleigh's 1892 discovery that the
atomic weight of nitrogen found in chemical
compounds was lower than that of nitrogen
found in the atmosphere. He ascribed this
discrepancy to a light gas included in
chemical compounds of nitrogen, while
Ramsay suspected a hitherto undiscovered
heavy gas in atmospheric nitrogen. Using
two different methods to remove all known
gases from air, Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh
were able to announce in 1894 that they had
found a monatomic, chemically inert
gaseous element that constituted nearly 1
percent of the atmosphere; they named it
argon.

J.J. Thomson

The following year, Ramsay liberated

another inert gas from a mineral called
cleveite; this proved to be helium, previously
known only in the solar spectrum. In his
book The Gases of the Atmosphere (1896),
Ramsay showed that the positions of helium
and argon in the periodic table of elements
indicated that at least three more noble
gases might exist. In 1898 Ramsay and the
British chemist Morris W. Travers isolated
these elements—called neon, krypton, and
xenon—from air brought to a liquid state at
low temperature and high pressure. Sir
William Ramsay worked with Frederick
Soddy to demonstrate, in 1903, that alpha
particles (helium nuclei) were continually
produced during the radioactive decay of a
sample of radium. Ramsay was awarded the
1904 Nobel Prize for Chemistry in
recognition of "services in the discovery of
the inert gaseous elements in air, and his
determination of their place in the periodic
system."

In 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered the

electron using the cathode ray tube. In 1898,
Wilhelm Wien demonstrated that canal rays
(streams of positive ions) can be deflected
by magnetic fields, and that the amount of
deflection is proportional to the mass-to-
charge ratio. This discovery would lead to
the analytical technique known as mass
spectrometry in 1912.[91]

Marie and Pierre Curie

 
Marie Curie, a pioneer in the field of radioactivity and the
first twice-honored Nobel laureate (and still the only one in
two different sciences)

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
phenomena.

 
Pierre Curie, known for his work on radioactivity as well as

on ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism;

notably Curie's law and Curie point.

Pierre and Marie further explored

radioactivity by working to separate the
substances in uranium ores and then using
the electrometer to make radiation
measurements to ‘trace’ the minute amount
of unknown radioactive element among the
fractions that resulted. Working with the
mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a
new radioactive element in 1898. They
named the element polonium, after Marie's
native country of Poland. On December 21,
1898, the Curies detected the presence of
another radioactive material in the
pitchblende. They presented this finding to
the French Academy of Sciences on
December 26, proposing that the new
element be called radium. The Curies then
went to work isolating polonium and radium
from naturally occurring compounds to
prove that they were new elements. In 1902,
the Curies announced that they had
produced a decigram of pure radium,
demonstrating its existence as a unique
chemical element. While it took three years
for them to isolate radium, they were never
able to isolate polonium. Along with the
discovery of two new elements and finding
techniques for isolating radioactive
isotopes, Curie oversaw the world's first
studies into the treatment of neoplasms,
using radioactive isotopes. With Henri
Becquerel and her husband, Pierre Curie,
she was awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize for
Physics. She was the sole winner of the
1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She was
the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and
she is the only woman to win the award in
two different fields.

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 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

Ernest Rutherford, discoverer of the nucleus and

considered the father of nuclear physics

New Zealand-born chemist and physicist

Ernest Rutherford is considered to be "the
father of nuclear physics." Rutherford is best
known for devising the names alpha, beta,
and gamma to classify various forms of
radioactive "rays" which were poorly
understood at his time (alpha and beta rays
are particle beams, while gamma rays are a
form of high-energy electromagnetic
radiation). Rutherford deflected alpha rays
with both electric and magnetic fields in
1903. Working with Frederick Soddy,
Rutherford explained that radioactivity is
due to the transmutation of elements, now
known to involve nuclear reactions.

Top: Predicted results based on the then-accepted plum

Top: Predicted results based on the then-accepted plum
pudding model of the atom. Bottom: Observed results.
Rutherford disproved the plum pudding model and
concluded that the positive charge of the atom must be
concentrated in a small, central nucleus.

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 "half-life." In
1901 and 1902 he worked with Frederick
Soddy to prove that atoms of one
radioactive element would spontaneously
turn into another, by expelling a piece of the
atom at high velocity. In 1906 at the
University of Manchester, Rutherford
oversaw an experiment conducted by his
students Hans Geiger (known for the Geiger
counter) and Ernest Marsden. In the Geiger–
Marsden experiment, a beam of alpha
particles, generated by the radioactive
decay of radon, was directed normally onto
a sheet of very thin gold foil in an evacuated
chamber. Under the prevailing plum pudding
model, the alpha particles should all have
passed through the foil and hit the detector
screen, or have been deflected by, at most, a
few degrees.

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 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

The first Solvay Conference was held in Brussels in 1911

and was considered a turning point in the world of physics
and chemistry.

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 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.

Robert A. Millikan, who is best known for measuring the

charge on the electron, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in
1923.

In 1905, Albert Einstein explained Brownian

motion in a way that definitively proved
atomic theory. Leo Baekeland invented
bakelite, one of the first commercially
successful plastics. In 1909, American
physicist Robert Andrews Millikan - who had
studied in Europe under Walther Nernst and
Max Planck - measured the charge of
individual electrons with unprecedented
accuracy through the oil drop experiment, in
which he measured the electric charges on
tiny falling water (and later oil) droplets. His
study established that any particular
droplet's electrical charge is a multiple of a
definite, fundamental value — the electron's
charge — and thus a confirmation that all
electrons have the same charge and mass.
Beginning in 1912, he spent several years
investigating and finally proving Albert
Einstein's proposed linear relationship
between energy and frequency, and
providing the first direct photoelectric
support for Planck's constant. In 1923
Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Physics.

In 1909, S. P. L. Sørensen invented the pH

concept and develops methods for
measuring acidity. In 1911, Antonius Van
den Broek proposed the idea that the
elements on the periodic table are more
properly organized by positive nuclear
charge rather than atomic weight. In 1911,
the first Solvay Conference was held in
Brussels, bringing together most of the
most prominent scientists of the day. In
1912, William Henry Bragg and William
Lawrence Bragg proposed Bragg's law and
established the field of X-ray
crystallography, an important tool for
elucidating the crystal structure of
substances. In 1912, Peter Debye develops
the concept of molecular dipole to describe
asymmetric charge distribution in some
molecules.

Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr, the developer of the Bohr model of the atom,

and a leading founder of quantum mechanics

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.

Niels Bohr also worked on the principle of

complementarity, which states that an
electron can be interpreted in two mutually
exclusive and valid ways. Electrons can be
interpreted as wave or particle models. His
hypothesis was that an incoming particle
would strike the nucleus and create an
excited compound nucleus. This formed the
basis of his liquid drop model and later
provided a theory base for the explanation
of nuclear fission. Niels Bohr later received
the Nobel Prize awarded to him in physics
for his work.

Moseley's Staircase

In 1913, Henry Moseley, working from Van

den Broek's earlier idea, introduces concept
of atomic number to fix 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 chemical bond with the sharing of
a pair of electrons between the two bonded
atoms. Lewis introduced the "electron dot
diagrams" in this paper to symbolize the
electronic structures of atoms and
molecules. Now known as Lewis structures,
they are discussed in virtually every
introductory chemistry book.

Shortly after 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 establish
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 Arthur
Lapworth, Robert Robinson, Thomas Lowry,
and Christopher Ingold; while in
coordination chemistry, Lewis's bonding
model was promoted through the efforts of
the American chemist Maurice Huggins and
the British chemist Nevil Sidgwick.
Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics in the 1920s

   

   

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
thesis. 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 restriction
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 Wolfgang
Pauli developed the Pauli exclusion
principle, which states that no two electrons
around a single nucleus in an atom can
occupy the same quantum state
simultaneously, as described by four
quantum numbers. Pauli made major
contributions to quantum mechanics and
quantum field theory - he was awarded the
1945 Nobel Prize for Physics for his
discovery of the Pauli exclusion principle -
as well as solid-state physics, and he
successfully hypothesized the existence of
the neutrino. In addition to his original work,
he wrote masterful syntheses of several
areas of physical theory that are considered
classics of scientific literature.
 

The Schrödinger equation

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 Werner
Heisenberg was one of the key creators of
quantum mechanics. In 1925, Heisenberg
discovered a way to formulate quantum
mechanics in terms of matrices. For that
discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Physics for 1932. In 1927 he published
his uncertainty principle, upon which he built
his philosophy and for which he is best
known. Heisenberg was able to
demonstrate that if you were studying an
electron in an atom you could say where it
was (the electron's location) or where it was
going (the electron's velocity), but it was
impossible to express both at the same
time. He also made important contributions
to the theories of the hydrodynamics of
turbulent flows, the atomic nucleus,
ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, and
subatomic particles, and he was
instrumental in planning the first West
German nuclear reactor at Karlsruhe,
together with a research reactor in Munich,
in 1957. Considerable controversy
surrounds his work on atomic research
during World War II.

Quantum chemistry

Some view the birth of quantum chemistry

in the discovery of the Schrödinger equation
and its application to the hydrogen atom in
1926. However, the 1927 article of Walter
Heitler and Fritz London[92] is often
recognised as the first milestone in the
history of quantum chemistry. This is the
first application of quantum mechanics to
the diatomic hydrogen molecule, and thus to
the phenomenon of the chemical bond. In
the following years much progress was
accomplished by Edward Teller, Robert S.
Mulliken, Max Born, J. Robert Oppenheimer,
Linus Pauling, Erich Hückel, Douglas
Hartree, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock, to
cite a few.

Still, skepticism remained as to the general

power of quantum mechanics applied to
complex chemical systems. The situation
around 1930 is described by Paul Dirac:[93]

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 molecular or
atomic physics to underline the fact that
they were more the application of quantum
mechanics to chemistry and spectroscopy
than answers to chemically relevant
questions. In 1951, a milestone article in
quantum chemistry is the seminal paper of
Clemens C. J. Roothaan on Roothaan
equations.[94] It opened the avenue to the
solution of the self-consistent field
equations for small molecules like hydrogen
or nitrogen. Those computations were
performed with the help of tables of
integrals which were computed on the most
advanced computers of the time.

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 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 electronic
structure of the atom; Linus Pauling's book
on The Nature of the Chemical Bond used
the principles of quantum mechanics to
deduce bond angles in ever-more
complicated molecules. However, though
some principles deduced from quantum
mechanics were able to predict qualitatively
some chemical features for biologically
relevant molecules, they were, till the end of
the 20th century, more a collection of rules,
observations, and recipes than rigorous ab
initio quantitative methods.

 
Diagrammatic representation of some key structural
features of DNA

This heuristic approach triumphed in 1953

when James Watson and Francis Crick
deduced the double helical structure of DNA
by constructing models constrained by and
informed by the knowledge of the chemistry
of the constituent parts and the X-ray
diffraction patterns obtained by Rosalind
Franklin.[95] This discovery lead to an
explosion of research into the biochemistry
of life.

In the same year, the Miller–Urey

experiment demonstrated that basic
constituents of protein, simple amino acids,
could themselves be built up from simpler
molecules in a simulation of primordial
processes on Earth. Though many
questions remain about the true nature of
the origin of life, this was the first attempt
by chemists to study hypothetical
processes in the laboratory under controlled
conditions.

In 1983 Kary Mullis devised a method for

the in-vitro amplification of DNA, known as
the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which
revolutionized the chemical processes used
in the laboratory to manipulate it. PCR could
be used to synthesize specific pieces of
DNA and made possible the sequencing of
DNA of organisms, which culminated in the
huge human genome project.
An important piece in the double helix
puzzle was solved by one of Pauling's
students Matthew Meselson and Frank
Stahl, the result of their collaboration
(Meselson–Stahl experiment) has been
called as "the most beautiful experiment in
biology".

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

 
Buckminsterfullerene, C60

In 1970, John Pople developed the Gaussian

program greatly easing computational
chemistry calculations.[96] In 1971, Yves
Chauvin offered an explanation of the
reaction mechanism of olefin metathesis
reactions.[97] In 1975, Karl Barry Sharpless
and his group discovered stereoselective
oxidation reactions including Sharpless
epoxidation,[98][99] Sharpless asymmetric
dihydroxylation,[100][101][102] and Sharpless
oxyamination.[103][104][105] In 1985, Harold
Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley
discovered fullerenes, a class of large
carbon molecules superficially resembling
the geodesic dome designed by architect R.
Buckminster Fuller.[106] In 1991, Sumio Iijima
used electron microscopy to discover a type
of cylindrical fullerene known as a carbon
nanotube, though earlier work had been
done in the field as early as 1951. This
material is an important component in the
field of nanotechnology.[107] In 1994, Robert
A. Holton and his group achieved the first
total synthesis of Taxol.[108][109][110] In 1995,
Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman produced the
first Bose–Einstein condensate, a
substance that displays quantum
mechanical properties on the macroscopic
scale.[111]

Mathematics and chemistry

Classically, before the 20th century,
chemistry was defined as the science of the
nature of matter and its transformations. It
was therefore clearly distinct from physics
which was not concerned with such
dramatic transformation of matter.
Moreover, in contrast to physics, chemistry
was not using much of mathematics. Even
some were particularly reluctant to use
mathematics within chemistry. For example,
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 changed and 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
petroleum extracted from the earth for the
production of a host of chemicals and
largely replaced the use of whale oil, coal tar
and naval stores used previously. Large-
scale production and refinement of
petroleum provided feedstocks for liquid
fuels such as gasoline and diesel, solvents,
lubricants, asphalt, waxes, and for the
production of many of the common
materials of the modern world, such as
synthetic fibers, plastics, paints, detergents,
pharmaceuticals, adhesives and ammonia
as fertilizer and for other uses. Many of
these required new catalysts and the
utilization of chemical engineering for their
cost-effective production.
In the mid-twentieth century, control of the
electronic structure of semiconductor
materials was made precise by the creation
of large ingots of extremely pure single
crystals of silicon and germanium. Accurate
control of their chemical composition by
doping with other elements made the
production of the solid state transistor in
1951 and made possible the production of
tiny integrated circuits for use in electronic
devices, especially computers.

See also
Histories and timelines

Atomic theory
Cupellation
History of chromatography
History of electrochemistry
History of the molecule
History of molecular biology
History of physics
History of science and technology
History of the periodic table
History of thermodynamics
History of energy
History of molecular theory
History of materials science
List of years in science
Nobel Prize in chemistry
Timeline of atomic and subatomic
physics
Timeline of chemical elements
discoveries
 Timeline of chemistry
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
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
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-

Template:Niels Bohr

Notes
1. Selected Classic Papers from the
History of Chemistry
2. Henshilwood, C. S.; d'Errico, F.; Van
Niekerk, K. L.; Coquinot, Y.; Jacobs, Z.;
Lauritzen, S. E.; Menu, M.; García-
Moreno, R. (2011-10-15). "A 100,000-
year-old ochre-processing workshop at
 year-old ochre-processing workshop at
Blombos Cave, South Africa". Science.
334 (6053): 219–22.
Bibcode:2011Sci...334..219H .
doi:10.1126/science.1211535 .
PMID 21998386 . |access-date=
requires |url=(help)
3. Corbyn, Zoë (2011-10-13). "African
cave's ancient ochre lab" . Nature
News. Retrieved 2018-10-04.
4. "History of Gold" . Gold Digest.
Retrieved 2007-02-04.
5. Photos, E., 'The Question of Meteorictic
versus Smelted Nickel-Rich Iron:
Archaeological Evidence and
Experimental Results' World
Archaeology Vol. 20, No. 3,
Archaeometallurgy (February 1989), pp.
403–421. Online version accessed on
 2010-02-08.
6. W. Keller (1963) The Bible as History, p.
156 ISBN 0-340-00312-X
7. "THE ORIGINS OF GLASSMAKING" .
Corning Museum of Glass. December
2011.
8. Radivojević, Miljana; Rehren, Thilo;
Pernicka, Ernst; Šljivar, Dušan; Brauns,
Michael; Borić, Dušan (2010). "On the
origins of extractive metallurgy: New
evidence from Europe". Journal of
Archaeological Science. 37 (11): 2775.
doi:10.1016/j.jas.2010.06.012 .
9. Neolithic Vinca was a metallurgical
culture Stonepages from news sources
November 2007
10. Will Durant wrote in The Story of
Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage:
Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage:

Something has been said

about the chemical
excellence of cast iron in
ancient India, and about the
high industrial development
of the Gupta times, when
India was looked to, even by
Imperial Rome, as the most
skilled of the nations in such
chemical industries as
dyeing, tanning, soap-
making, glass and cement...
By the sixth century the
Hindus were far ahead of
Europe in industrial
chemistry; they were
masters of calcinations,
distillation, sublimation,
steaming, fixation, the
production of light without
heat, the mixing of
anesthetic and soporific
powders, and the
preparation of metallic salts,
compounds and alloys. The
tempering of steel was
brought in ancient India to a
perfection unknown in
Europe till our own times;
King Porus is said to have
selected, as a specially
valuable gift from Alexander,
not gold or silver, but thirty
 pounds of steel. The Moslems
took much of this Hindu
chemical science and
industry to the Near East
and Europe; the secret of
manufacturing "Damascus"
blades, for example, was
taken by the Arabs from the
Persians, and by the
Persians from India.

11. B. W. Anderson (1975) The Living World

of the Old Testament, p. 154, ISBN 0-
582-48598-3
12. R. F. Tylecote (1992) A History of
Metallurgy ISBN 0-901462-88-8
13. Temple, Robert K.G. (2007). The Genius
 of China: 3,000 Years of Science,
Discovery, and Invention (3rd edition).
London: André Deutsch. pp. 44–56.
ISBN 978-0-233-00202-6.
14. Will Durant (1935), Our Oriental
Heritage:

Two systems of Hindu

thought propound physical
theories suggestively similar
to those of Greece. Kanada,
founder of the Vaisheshika
philosophy, held that the
world was composed of
atoms as many in kind as the
various elements. The Jains
more nearly approximated
to Democritus by teaching
 to Democritus by teaching
that all atoms were of the
same kind, producing
different effects by diverse
modes of combinations.
Kanada believed light and
heat to be varieties of the
same substance; Udayana
taught that all heat comes
from the sun; and
Vachaspati, like Newton,
interpreted light as
composed of minute
particles emitted by
substances and striking the
eye.

15. Simpson, David (29 June 2005).

15. Simpson, David (29 June 2005).
"Lucretius (c. 99 - c. 55 BCE)" . The
Internet History of Philosophy.
Retrieved 2007-01-09.
16. Lucretius (50 BCE). "de Rerum Natura
(On the Nature of Things)" . The
Internet Classics Archive.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Retrieved 2007-01-09. Check date
values in: |date=(help)
17. Norris, John A. (2006). "The Mineral
Exhalation Theory of Metallogenesis in
Pre-Modern Mineral Science". Ambix.
53: 43–65.
doi:10.1179/174582306X93183 .
18. Clulee, Nicholas H. (1988). John Dee's
Natural Philosophy. Routledge. p. 97.
ISBN 978-0-415-00625-5.
19. Strathern, 2000. Page 79.
20. Holmyard, E.J. (1957). Alchemy. New
York: Dover, 1990. pp. 15, 16.
21. William Royall Newman. Atoms and
Alchemy: Chymistry and the
experimental origins of the scientific
revolution. University of Chicago Press,
2006. p.xi
22. Holmyard, E.J. (1957). Alchemy. New
York: Dover, 1990. pp. 48, 49.
23. Stanton J. Linden. The alchemy reader:
from Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac
Newton Cambridge University Press.
2003. p.44
24. Brock, William H. (1992). The Fontana
History of Chemistry. London, England:
Fontana Press. pp. 32–33. ISBN 978-0-
00-686173-7.
25. Brock, William H. (1992). The Fontana
History of Chemistry. London, England:
Fontana Press. ISBN 978-0-00-686173-
7.
26. The History of Ancient Chemistry
Archived 2015-03-04 at the Wayback
Machine
27. Derewenda, Zygmunt S.; Derewenda, ZS
(2007). "On wine, chirality and
crystallography". Acta Crystallographica
Section A. 64 (Pt 1): 246–258 [247].
Bibcode:2008AcCrA..64..246D .
doi:10.1107/S0108767307054293 .
PMID 18156689 .
28. John Warren (2005). "War and the
Cultural Heritage of Iraq: a sadly
mismanaged affair", Third World
Quarterly, Volume 26, Issue 4 & 5, p.
 815-830.
29. Dr. A. Zahoor (1997), JABIR IBN
HAIYAN (Geber)
30. Paul Vallely, How Islamic inventors
changed the world , The Independent,
10 March 2006
31. Kraus, Paul, Jâbir ibn Hayyân,
Contribution à l'histoire des idées
scientifiques dans l'Islam. I. Le corpus
des écrits jâbiriens. II. Jâbir et la
science grecque,. Cairo (1942-1943).
Repr. By Fuat Sezgin, (Natural Sciences
in Islam. 67-68), Frankfurt. 2002:

To form an idea of the

historical place of Jabir's
alchemy and to tackle the
problem of its sources, it is
problem of its sources, it is
advisable to compare it with
what remains to us of the
alchemical literature in the
Greek language. One knows
in which miserable state this
literature reached us.
Collected by Byzantine
scientists from the tenth
century, the corpus of the
Greek alchemists is a cluster
of incoherent fragments,
going back to all the times
since the third century until
the end of the Middle Ages.

"The efforts of Berthelot and

Ruelle to put a little order in
this mass of literature led
only to poor results, and the
later researchers, among
them in particular Mrs.
Hammer-Jensen, Tannery,
Lagercrantz, von Lippmann,
Reitzenstein, Ruska, Bidez,
Festugiere and others, could
make clear only few points
of detail…

The study of the Greek

alchemists is not very
encouraging. An even
surface examination of the
Greek texts shows that a
Greek texts shows that a
very small part only was
organized according to true
experiments of laboratory:
even the supposedly
technical writings, in the
state where we find them
today, are unintelligible
nonsense which refuses any
interpretation.

It is different with Jabir's

alchemy. The relatively clear
description of the processes
and the alchemical
apparatuses, the methodical
classification of the
substances, mark an
experimental spirit which is
extremely far away from the
weird and odd esotericism of
the Greek texts. The theory
on which Jabir supports his
operations is one of
clearness and of an
impressive unity. More than
with the other Arab authors,
one notes with him a balance
between theoretical teaching
and practical teaching,
between the `ilm and the
`amal. In vain one would
seek in the Greek texts a
work as systematic as that
 which is presented for
example in the Book of
Seventy."

(cf. Ahmad Y Hassan. "A Critical

Reassessment of the Geber Problem:
Part Three" . Archived from the original
on 2008-11-20. Retrieved 2008-08-09.)

32. Will Durant (1980). The Age of Faith

(The Story of Civilization, Volume 4), p.
162-186. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-
01200-2.
33. Strathern, Paul. (2000), Mendeleyev's
Dream – the Quest for the Elements,
New York: Berkley Books
34. Marmura, Michael E.; Nasr, Seyyed
Hossein (1965). "An Introduction to
 Islamic Cosmological Doctrines.
Conceptions of Nature and Methods
Used for Its Study by the Ikhwan Al-
Safa'an, Al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina by
Seyyed Hossein Nasr". Speculum. 40
(4): 744–746. doi:10.2307/2851429 .
JSTOR 2851429 .
35. Robert Briffault (1938). The Making of
Humanity, p. 196-197.
36. Alakbarov, Farid (2001). "A 13th-Century
Darwin? Tusi's Views on Evolution" .
Azerbaijan International. 9: 2.
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Geology and Palaeontology, p. 15
38. Asarnow, Herman (2005-08-08). "Sir
Francis Bacon: Empiricism" . An Image-
Oriented Introduction to Backgrounds
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the original on 2007-02-01. Retrieved
2007-02-22.
39. Crosland, M.P. (1959). "The use of
diagrams as chemical 'equations' in the
lectures of William Cullen and Joseph
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40. Robert Boyle
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Chemistry" University of Brooklyn:
McGraw-Hill
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original definition.
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Experimentation and Alchemical Matter
Theory in the Scientific Revolution".
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doi:10.1007/s11016-007-9095-8 .
ISSN 1467-9981 .
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geognosiens grundläggare" = "the
modern mineralogy's and geognosie's
founder"
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The difficulty in precisely defining the
time and place of the "discovery" of
oxygen, within the context of the
developing chemical revolution, is one
of Thomas Kuhn's central illustrations
of the gradual nature of paradigm shifts
in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions.
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The Human Face of Chemical Sciences.
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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
Jensen, William B. "Textbooks and the
future of the history of chemistry as an
academic discipline." Bulletin for the
 History of Chemistry 3 (2006): 1-8.
Rampling, Jennifer M. "The Future of the
History of Chemistry." Ambix (2017) 64#4:
295-300. online
Servos, John W., Physical chemistry from
Ostwald to Pauling : the making of a
science in America , Princeton, N.J. :
Princeton University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-
691-08566-8
Documentaries
BBC (2010). Chemistry: A Volatile History.

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