June in Chemistry

• Sadi Carnot born 1796: investigated heat engines and laid foundations (Carnot cycle) for Second Law of Thermodynamics. Read his Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat
• William Standish Knowles born 1917: chiral catalysis of hydrogenation reactions; Nobel Prize.

• Edward Elgar born 1857: composer and amateur chemist [Thanks to Leopold May for drawing this to my attention.]
• Nils Gabriel Sefstrom born 1787: codiscovered vanadium (V, element 23).

• Werner Arber born 1929: restriction enzymes; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1978
• Otto Loewi born 1873: chemical transmission of nerve impulses; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1936.
• Robert Burns Woodward synthesized chlorophyll, 1960.

• Jean Antoine Chaptal born 1756: introduced name "nitrogen"; viticulture; dyeing; manufacture of sulfuric acid.
• Robert Furchgott born 1916: role of nitric oxide signaling in cardiovacular system; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1998.
• Jacob Volhard born 1834 : organic synthesis, including creatine, brominated organic acids, and thiophene compounds.
• Heinrich Otto Wieland born 1877: organic chemistry (including nitrogenous organic radicals) and biochemistry (including sterols and bile acids); Nobel Prize, 1927.

• Johan Gadolin born 1760: discovered yttrium (Y, element 39); gadolinium (Gd, 64) was named after him.

• Benjamin Brodie gave a lecture to the Chemical Society on the "Chemical Calculus", an attempt at a non-atomic theory of chemical composition, 1866.
• Edwin Gerhard Krebs born 1918: protein phosphorylation as biological regulatory mechanism; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1992.
• Heinrich Rohrer born 1933: scanning tunneling microscope; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1986. (Download a 1986 article by Rohrer and Binnig on scanning tunneling microscopy.)
• Pure Food and Drug Act signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, 1906.
• Richard Smalley born 1943: fullerenes (see original paper); Nobel Prize, 1996.

• James Young Simpson born 1811: obsterician and pioneer in anesthesia; first used chloroform; introduced use of ether in Britain.
• Robert Sanderson Mulliken born 1896: molecular orbital method of electronic structure; Nobel Prize, 1966.

• Francis Harry Compton Crick born 1916: double-helix structure of DNA; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1962. Link to an interview with him.
• Edwin Mattison McMillan and Philip Abelson announced discovery of neptunium (Np, element 93), 1940.
• John Roberts born 1918: physical organic chemistry (mechanisms, small-ring compounds, substituent effects on reactivity)
• Kenneth Geddes Wilson born 1936: phase changes; renormalization group; Nobel Prize (physics), 1982.

• Henry Hallett Dale born 1875: isolation of acetylcholine and demonstration of its role as a neurotransmitter; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1936.
• Hermann von Fehling born 1811: Fehling's solution as oxidizing agent and analytical reagent for aldehydes and sugars; composition of paraldehyde and metaldehyde; preparation of phenyl cyanide.
• Sarah Ratner born 1903: nitrogen metabolism and urea synthesis; Garvan Medal, 1961

• Ferdinand Tiemann born 1848: Reimer-Tiemann reaction; Tiemann rearrangement of amide oximes; synthesis of vanillin (the main component of vanilla extract) and of ionones (odor of violets).

• Carl von Linde born 1842: equipment for the liquefaction of air.

• Wallace Reed Brode born 1900: chemical spectroscopy; president of American Chemical Society and the research organization Sigma Xi.
• Lyman Creighton Craig born 1906: separation of biomolecules; molar mass of insulin; ergot alkaloids and lysergic acid. Read one of his papers.
• Philippe-Auguste Guye [en Français] born 1862: precise determination of atomic weights; electrochemical synthesis of nitric acid.
• Fritz Albert Lipmann born 1899: discovered coenzyme A and central role of ATP in metabolism; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1953.
• Bert Sakmann: single-ion channels in cells; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1991.

• Lloyd Conover born 1923: invented tetracycline (US patent 2,699,054).
• Charles Goessmann born 1827: analysis of peanuts; chemistry of sorghum and sugar beets; president of American Chemical Society; click here for more on Goessmann and his book collection.
• James Clerk Maxwell born 1831: electromagnetic theory (Maxwell's equations), thermodynamics (Maxwell relations), kinetic theory of gases (Maxwell velocity distribution). (Read Maxwell's words on "Maxwell's demon", a review of the atomic-molecular theory, and of the kinetic theory of gases.)
• Henry Moseley shipped out from England to Turkey, 1915. The discoverer of atomic numbers was later killed at Gallipoli.

• James Whyte Black born 1924: principles of drug treatment; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1988.
• United States Environmental Protection Agency issued an order banning use of DichloroDiphenylTrichloroethane (DDT, more precisely, 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(4-chlorophenyl)ethane) effective December 31, 1972.
• Karl Landsteiner born 1868: discovered human blood groups; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1930.
• John Ulric Nef born 1862: valence of carbon; chemistry of isocyanides, nitromethanes, and fulminates.

• Carl Auer von Welsbach announced separation of didymium into neodymium (Nd, element 60) and praseodymium (Pr, 59), 1885.
• Antoine de Fourcroy born 1755: collaborated with Antoine Lavoisier and Claude Berthollet in some of their research and nomenclature.
• Charles Goodyear patented vulcanization process for rubber, 1844 (US patent 3,633).
• Samuel Colville Lind born 1879: radioactivity and photochemistry; invented electroscope for radium measurements (Lind electroscope); proposed ionization theory of the chemical effects of radium rays.

• Henry Enfield Roscoe announced isolation of vanadium metal, 1869.
• Georg Wittig born 1897: organophosphorus chemistry (e.g. Wittig olefination) and Wittig rearrangement; Nobel Prize, 1979.

• William Crookes born 1832: discovered thallium (Tl, element 81); invented radiometer; separation of rare earths; spectroscopy; founder and editor of Chemical News; cathode ray studies (Crookes tube).
• Hiram Stevens Maxim received US patent number 430,212 for smokeless gunpowder, 1890.
• John Henry Pepper born 1821: science educator, popularizer, and showman; inventor of "Pepper's ghost," a stage special effect. [Thanks to Bill Palmer at Charles Darwin University for drawing my attention to Pepper.]
• William Perkin, Jr. born 1860: synthesis of terpenes and alkaloids; son of William Henry Perkin.
• Byron Riegel born 1906: oral contraceptives.
• Howard Ensign Simmons, Jr. born 1929: organic synthesis and industrial research management at DuPont.

• Charles Baskerville born 1870: processes for refining and hydrogenating oils; plastics; reinforced lead; anesthetics.
• Dudley Herschbach born 1932: molecular beam studies of reaction dynamics; Nobel Prize, 1986.
• Edward David Hughes born 1906: physical organic chemistry.
• Jerome Karle born 1918: X-ray crystallography; Nobel Prize, 1985.
• Emil Knoevenagel born 1865: organic synthesis; Knoevenagel condensation.

• Ernst Boris Chain 1906: extraction and purification of penicillin; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1945.
• Paul Flory born 1910: physical chemistry of macromolecules; Nobel Prize, 1974.
• Cyril Norman Hinshelwood born 1897: chemical kinetics; Nobel Prize, 1956.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner born 1783: discovered morphine (extracted it from opium).

• Mary Lowe Good born 1931: inorganic and industrial chemistry; science policy; president of American Chemical Society.
• Lloyd Augustus Hall born 1894: food chemistry, particularly preservation of meats, fats, and oils.
• W. R. Grace incorporated, 1899.
• Frederick Gowland Hopkins born 1861: nutritional chemistry; vitamins; essential amino acids; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1929.
• L. B. Magnusson and T. J. LaChappelle isolated first microscopic amount of a neptunium (Np, element 93) compound at wartime Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago, 1944.
• Aleksandr Mikhailovich Zaitsev born 1841: rules concerning elimination of hydrogen halides from alkyl haloanhydrides and of water from alcohols; first synthesis of secondary alcohols. (See David Lewis' article on organic chemistry at the University of Kazan.)

• Charles Thomas Jackson born 1805: analytical chemist and geologist; ether as an anaesthetic (controversy with his student, William Morton).
• Joyce Jacobson Kaufman born 1929: quantum chemical and other physicochemical techniques applied to pharmacological and toxicological problems
• Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Thenard announced the isolation of boron (B, element 5), 1808.
• Giuliana Cavaglieri Tesoro born 1921: chemical modification of polymers, particularly with applications to textiles

• Harry Julius Emeléus born 1903: inorganic chemistry, fluorine chemistry.
• Nathaniel Howell Furman born 1892: analytical separation of uranium.
• The first standards for the meter and kilogram (the first standards in the international system (SI) of units) are deposited in the National Archives of France, 1799.

• Etienne-Louis Malus born 1775: double refraction (birefringence).

• Eleuthère du Pont born 1771: gunpowder manufacturer; founded DuPont, 1802
• First exhibition of photography (works of Hippolyte Bayard), 1839.
• Frederick George Keyes born 1885: thermodynamic properties of matter; kinetic theory; application of thermodynamics to equilibria.
• Johannes Wislicenus born 1835: proposed idea of geometric isomers; acetoacetic ester synthesis.

• Herbert Brereton Baker born 1862: effect of water on chemical change; desiccating and poison gases.
• Marie Curie (née Manya Sklodowska) presented doctoral thesis to Paris faculty of science, 1903. The thesis summarized the work for which she woud share the Nobel prize that same year.
• Walther Hermann Nernst born 1864: third law of thermodynamics; electrochemistry (Nernst equation); Nobel Prize, 1920.
• William Howard Stein born 1911: enzyme chemistry; Nobel Prize, 1972.

• Henri Moissan electrolyzed a solution of KHF₂ in anhydrous HF to isolate fluorine (F, element 9), 1886.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald converted ammonia to nitric acid with a platinum catalyst, 1907.
• Roy Plunkett born 1910: invention and characterization of Teflon® (US patent 2,230,654)
• James Smithson died 1829 (birth date unknown c.1765): analysis of zinc ores; his bequest started the Smithsonian Institution.
• William Thomson (Baron Kelvin of Largs) born 1824: theory and practice of thermodynamics, including a formulation of the second law; absolute temperature (Kelvin) scale.

• Arthur Clay Cope born 1909: ring compounds; synthetic organic chemistry (Cope rearrangement)
• Abraham Gesner obtained US patents 11,203, 11,204, and 11,205 on a process for obtaining kerosene by distillation, 1854.

• Richard Erlenmeyer born 1825: conical flask (Erlenmeyer flask); organic synthesis (including tyrosine and guanidine).
• Jenny Pickworth Glusker born 1931: crystallography; structure-activity relationships for carcinogens and mutagens
• Maria Goeppert-Mayer born 1906: nucleus shell structure; Nobel Prize (physics), 1963.
• Jane Haldimand Marcet died 1858 (birth date unknown in 1769): wrote Conversations on Chemistry (popular chemistry text).
• F. Sherwood Rowland born 1927: atmospheric chemistry, particularly of ozone layer; Nobel Prize, 1995.

• Peter Waage born 1833: formulated law of mass action (with brother-in-law Cato Guldberg)

• Paul Berg born 1926: recombinant DNA; Nobel Prize, 1980.
• Joseph Caventou born 1795: worked with Pierre-Joseph Pelletier; isolated strychnine, chlorophyll, quinine, and caffeine
• Humphry Davy announced the isolation of barium (Ba, element 56), calcium (Ca, 20), "magnium" (magnesium, Mg, 12), and strontium (Sr, 38) to the Royal Society, 1808. He also announced the isolation of boron (B, element 5), nine days after Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Thenard made a similar announcement in France. (Read Davy's paper.)
• William Higgins died 1825 (uncertain; birth date unknown in 1762 or 1763): atomic notions of chemical combination; advocate of antiphlogistic theory of combustion.
• Valence bond paper on H₂ by Walter Heitler and Fritz London received at Zeitschrift für Physik, 1927.

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