January in the Periodic Table

A month by month list of birthdays and anniversaries from This Week in the History of Chemistry associated with the periodic table or with elements prepared for the International Year of the Periodic Table (2019). These record contain links to a searchable map, Places of the Periodic Table. Map links include the text "[map];" to see information associated with the location, click on the icon at the center of the map or search for the person or event mentioned here.

January 1

Eugène-Anatole Demarçay born 1852: discovered europium (Eu, element 63) [map]; spectroscopic evidence of the discovery of radium (Ra, 88) [map]

January 2

Charles Hatchett born 1765: discovered niobium (Nb, element 41 [map]), which he called columbium
Walter Heitler born 1904: quantum-mechanical treatment of molecular hydrogen [map] (Heitler-London approach).

January 4

Herbert Henry Dow, founder of Dow Chemical, prepared bromine (Br, element 35) [map] from brine, 1891.
Aristid Victor Grosse born 1905: isolated protactinium (Pa, element 91) [map]; ²³⁵U fission by slow neutrons

January 7

Henry Enfield Roscoe born 1833: chemical action of light; co-inventor of actinometer; first to isolate vanadium (V, element 23) [map]. Read his biography of Dalton and his autobiography .

January 8

John Allen Veatch found borax [map] in mineral water at Tuscan Springs, CA, 1856.

January 9

Søren Sørensen born 1868: indroduced concept of pH as a measure of hydrogen ion concentration [map]; research on proteins, amino acids, and enzymes

January 12

Johan August Arfwedson born 1792: discovered lithium (Li, 3) [map] in the mineral petalite.
Antonio de Ulloa born 1716: discoverer of platinum (Pt, 78) [map].

January 15

Henry Cavendish [map] reported quantitative composition of water to Royal Society, 1784. Pierre Samuel DuPont born 1870: president of DuPont credited with diversifying company from explosives to broad-based chemical company

January 16

Anders Ekeberg born 1767: discovered tantalum (Ta, element 73) [map].
Fermium (Fm, element 100) [map] was first isolated by (left to right) Louise Smith, Sherman Fried, Gary Higgins; (back row) Albert Ghiorso, Rod Spence, Glenn Seaborg, Paul Fields and John Huizenga (using ion-exchange chromatorgraphy) and identified, 1953, at the Berkeley Radiation Lab (later named Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [map]).

January 19

Henry Bessemer born 1813: metallurgist, inventor of the Bessemer process and Bessemer converter for making steel [map] (US patent 16,082). Read his autobiography.
Susan Solomon born 1956: atmospheric chemistry of ozone, particularly polar [map].

January 20

Alexandre-Émile Beguyer de Chancourtois born 1820: geologist whose arrangement of elements and other substances by atomic weight exhibited chemical periodicity [map] in 1862. (See paper and Vis Tellurique figure.)

January 21

Dow Chemical produced the first ingot of any metal to be extracted from seawater (magnesium; Mg, element 12) [map], 1941.

January 23

The nomination of Marie Curie [map] to the French Academy of Sciences was rejected, 1911.
Karl Karlovich Klaus born 1796: discoverer of ruthenium (Ru, element 44) [map]; early platinum [map] chemistry

January 24

Burris Bell Cunningham and coworkers first reported absorption spectrum of einsteinium (Es, element 99) [map] compound at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [map], 1966.
Gold [map] discovered at Sutter's Mill [map], California, 1848, causing '49er gold rush.
Berta Karlik born 1904: observed astatine (At, element 85) isotopes from radioactive decay at Radium Institute of Vienna [map]
Joseph-Achille Le Bel born 1847: structural organic chemistry (tetrahedral carbon [map]).
Morris William Travers born 1872: codiscoverer of krypton (Kr, element 36), neon (Ne, 10), and xenon(Xe, 54) [map]; low temperature chemistry

January 25

Robert Boyle born 1627: defined element [map]; discovered proportionality of gas pressure and volume (Boyle's law); experiments in vacuo (for example, trying to support combustion in a vacuum); author of The Sceptical Chymist and New experiments physico-mechanicall, touching the spring of the air and its effects; suggested use of alcohol as biological preservative
Fluoridation of drinking water begins in Grand Rapids, Michigan [map] (first municipal water fluoridation in USA), 1945.
Martin Klaproth [map] reported to Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1798 the 1782 discovery by Franz Joseph Müller von Reichenstein of a new element and named it tellurium (Te, element 52) [map].

January 26

Niels Bohr [map] reported the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann [map], and its interpretation by Lise Meitner [map] and Otto Frisch, to the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics, 1939.

January 29

Sydney Chapman born 1888: geophysicist; diffusion in kinetic theory of gases; oxygen reactions for stratospheric ozone [map]
Edward Morley born 1838: ether drift experiments (Michelson-Morley experiment: read a modern description and the original paper); painstakingly precise determination of the atomic weight of oxygen [map] at Case Western University.
Lewis Frederick Urry born 1927: inventor; alkaline batteries and lithium batteries [map].

January 31

Irving Langmuir born 1881: surface chemistry (Langmuir adsorption isotherm, Langmuir-Blodgett films); inventor of gas-filled tungsten lamp (US patent 1,180,159; however, see earlier tungsten lamp [map]), use of atomic hydrogen blowpipe for welding, condensation pump for high vacuum; atomic structure and valence (see two examples: 1 and 2); Nobel Prize, 1932
Theodore William Richards born 1868: atomic weights [map], electrochemistry, and thermodynamics; discovered that lead from uranium and from thorium had different atomic weights; Nobel Prize, 1914.

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