Selected biographies list
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Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856) was an Italian chemist, most noted for his contributions to the theory of molarity and molecular mass. Avogadro's law implies that the relationship occurring between the weights of same volumes of different gases (at the same temperature and pressure) corresponds to the relationship between respective molecular weights. Hence, relative molecular masses can be calculated from the masses of gas samples. One of the most important contributions of Avogadro's work was clearly distinguishing atoms from molecules, admitting that simple particles too could be composed of molecules, and that these are composed of atoms.
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Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish chemist, and one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. The Arrhenius equation and the lunar crater Arrhenius are named after him. Arrhenius was the first to explain the fact that neither pure salts nor pure water are conductors, but solutions of salts in water are, due to the dissociation of salt into ions. As an extension of this idea, he proposed that acids were substances which produce hydrogen ions in solution, and that bases were substances which produce hydroxide ions in solution. Arrhenius also developed a theory to explain the ice ages, and first formulated the idea that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903.
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Fritz Haber (1868-1934) was a German chemist, known as "the father of chemical warfare" due to his work in developing and deploying chlorine and other poisonous gases for use in World War I. Along with Carl Bosch, he developed the Haber process, which is the catalytic formation of ammonia from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen under conditions of relatively low temperature and high pressure. This is considered an important milestone in industrial chemistry, and he received the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work. As part of his work in chemical warfare, he developed gas masks with absorbent filters, and formulated a mathematical relationship between gas concentration and necessary exposure time to induce death, known as Haber's rule. He is also associated with the development of the cyanide formulation, Zyklon B.
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Harold Urey (1893-1981) was an American physical chemist, who won the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on isotopes, specifically the discovery of deuterium, a hydrogen isotope, and the production of heavy water. He also performed pioneering research in cosmochemistry, which studies the origin and development of elements and their isotopes, primarily within the solar system. Urey, along with his student Stanley Miller, may be best remembered for the renowned Miller-Urey experiment, which shows that a mixture of ammonia, methane and hydrogen, when exposed to ultraviolet radiation and water, can interact to form amino acids, the "building blocks" of terrestrial life. This experiment followed on from Urey's work on the oxygen isotope 18O, and is considered to be pioneering work in the field of paleoclimatology, as it attempts to explain the composition of the early Earth's atmosphere.
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Freiherr Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) was a German chemist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and worked on the organization of organic chemistry. As a professor, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time. The vapor condensation device he popularized for his research is still known as a Liebig condenser, although it was in common use long before Liebig's research began. He is known as 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. He also invented a process for silvering that greatly improved the utility of mirrors.
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Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was a French microbiologist and chemist. He was the first to demonstrate chirality of molecules, using tartaric acid crystals, but this achievement is often overlooked in favor of his more famous work in biology and medicine. He is best known for demonstrating how to prevent milk and wine from going sour, a process which came to be called pasteurization. His experiments confirmed the germ theory of disease, and he created the first vaccine for rabies. He became one of the main founders of bacteriology, the other major figure being Robert Koch. Pasteur also discovered anaerobiosis, whereby some microorganisms can develop and live without air or oxygen.
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Hermann Emil Fischer (1852-1919) was a German chemist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1902. Many consider Fischer to be the most brilliant chemist who ever lived, because of his numerous contributions to science, especially chemistry and biochemistry. Among these is his discovery of phenylhydrazine. He also undertook vast studies on purines. This work showed that various substances such as adenine, xanthine, caffeine, uric acid, and guanine, all belonged to one homogeneous family, and could be derived from one another. He reasoned this to be due to their common origins from a parent molecule, a bicyclic nitrogenous structure into which the characteristic urea group entered. Fischer regarded this structure as hypothetical, and named it 'purine' in 1884. He synthesised it in 1898. He is also famed for his work on sugars.
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Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (1852-1911) was a Dutch physical and organic chemist, and recipient of the inaugural Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His first major findings accounted for the phenomenon of optical activity by assuming that the chemical bonds between carbon atoms and their neighbors were directed towards the corners of a regular tetrahedron. This three-dimensional structure perfectly accounted for the isomers found in nature (stereochemistry). He shares credit for this idea with the French chemist Joseph Le Bel, who independently came up with the same idea. He received the first Nobel Prize for his work on relating the behaviour of solutions to that displayed by gases.
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Marie Curie (1867-1934) was a Polish physicist and chemist, and a leading figure in the early science of radioactivity. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered the elements radium and polonium. She received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, thus becoming the first woman to earn a Nobel – 8 years later, she received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, thus becoming the first person to receive 2 Nobel Prizes, and the first to do so in two different fields. The only other scientist to have achieved this feat is Linus Pauling. Her death was from aplastic anemia, widely believed to be due to her massive exposure to radiation.
Portal:Chemistry/Selected biography/10 Yuan Tseh Lee (born 1936) is a Taiwanese chemist, and the first Taiwanese-born Nobel Prize laureate. Along with John Charles Polanyi and Dudley R. Herschbach, he received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for their contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes." Lee's particular work was on crossed molecular beams, to further its use in general reactions, a method for the study of important reactions for relatively large molecules. Since 1994, Lee has been the President of the Academia Sinica of the Republic of China.
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