Selected Classic Papers
	from the
	History of Chemistry

The Electron and Electronic Structure of Atoms

• Johann Balmer: from 1885 paper noting numerical regularities in wavelength of lines of the hydrogen spectrum. (Link to a biographical sketch of Balmer.)
• Niels Bohr: 1913 excerpt of address on application of Planck's quantum hypothesis to the spectrum of hydrogen. (Link to a biographical sketch of Bohr.)
• Niels Bohr: his model of the atom, 1913. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Niels Bohr: 1921 excerpt on the "correspondence principle" of quantum theory.
• Niels Bohr: 1921 paper on electron configurations and atomic structure. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Frederick S. Brackett: 1922 paper listing new members of the Paschen series of hydrogen spectral lines along with members of a new series (now known as the Brackett series) characterized by Bohr's formulas for hydrogen spectra. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Charles R. Bury: 1921 paper on the arrangement of electrons in atoms; gives electron configurations for most of the periodic table. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer: 1927 paper on the diffraction of electrons. This paper is at Nature's celebration of physics. (Link to a biographical sketch of Davisson and one of Germer.)
• John Edward Lennard-Jones: 1929 paper on molecular orbital descriptions of diatomic molecules, including paramagnetism of oxygen. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (View biographical paragraph on Lennard-Jones.)
• G. N. Lewis and Michael Kasha: 1944 paper on phosphorescence and triplet electronic states. This paper (pdf) is at the Turro group's History of Photochemistry page. (Link to a biographical sketch of Kasha.)
• Robert Millikan: 1913 paper on the elementary electrical charge and Avogadro's constant (excerpt). This paper is at the American Institute of Physics Center for the History of Physics. Link to a biographical sketch of Millikan.
• Hantaro Nagaoka (1904): from Saturnian model of atomic structure (i.e., ring of particles around a central force). This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a photo of Nagaoka.)
• Wolfgang Pauli: 1925 paper on the fourth quantum number. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a virtual exhibit on Pauli.)
• Jean Perrin (1895): collects cathode rays, obtaining a negative charge. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Max Planck (1920): excerpt on the quantum of action from Nobel Prize address. (Link to a biographical sketch.)
• Edmund C. Stoner: 1924 paper on "The Distribution of Electrons among Atomic Levels". This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to biographical information on Stoner.)
• George Johnstone Stoney (1894): asserts priority for suggesting that electric charge comes in discrete packages, and proposes the term "electron" for the "atom of electricity". This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to biographical information on Stoney.)
• J. J. Thomson: 1897 paper characterizing cathode rays, now known as electrons. Some of Thomson's contemporaries thought he must be kidding when he claimed that cathode rays were electrically charged particles with a mass-to-charge ratio 1000 times less than hydrogen ions. (Link to a biographical sketch of Thomson, a photo of his apparatus, or more information on the discovery of the electron.)
• J. J. Thomson: 1899 paper further characterizing cathode ray corpuscles by identifying them with thermoelectric, photoelectric, and radioactivity phenomena and measuring their mass. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• J. J. Thomson: excerpt from "On the Structure of the Atom ..." (1904), elaborating the "plum pudding" model. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• J. J. Thomson: excerpt from "On the Number of Corpuscles [i.e., electrons] in an Atom" (1906). The number is of the same order as the atomic weight, not thousands of times that number. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• J. J. Thomson: Nobel Prize in Physics Award Address, 1906, on the characterization of the electron.
• J. J. Thomson: on the positive rays of electric discharge tubes (1913), recognizing them as atoms and molecules stripped of one or more electrons, describing essentially an early mass spectrometer, and giving evidence for a heavy isotope of neon.
• Pieter Zeeman (1897): description of the magnetic splitting of spectral lines now named after him; includes measurement of the charge-to-mass ratio of what we now call the electron, independent of Thomson's cathode-ray research. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Zeeman.)

Elements: nature, number, and discovery

• Aristotle: On Generation and Corruption. This work is at the Internet Classics Archive at MIT. The first five parts of Book II in particular discuss elements, and in particular the system of four elements that predates Aristotle.
• Robert Boyle: The Sceptical Chymist (1661), page images at University of Pennsylvania. Boyle does not know how many elements there are or what those elements may be; however, he knows that those who believe the elements to be earth, air, fire, and water or mercury, sulfur, and salt do so on an insufficient basis. See HTML excerpts at this site (Classic Chemistry) and annotations [pdf] here. (Link to the Robert Boyle Project.)
• Pierre and Marie Curie: 1898 announcement of a new radioactive element, polonium.
• Pierre and Marie Curie and G. Bémont: December 1898 announcement of a new strongly radioactive element, radium.
• Humphry Davy: isolation of the alkali metals sodium and potassium (1808). (This paper is at the ChemTeam site. Link to a biographical sketch of Davy.)
• Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Thenard (1809): attempts to decompose "oxygenated muriatic acid" (the gas which we know as chlorine) prove difficult; the authors consider the possibility that it is an element, but are not convinced. The paper contains some interesting photochemistry as well. (Link to a biographical sketch of Gay-lussac or Thenard or a picture of Gay-Lussac or Thenard.)
• Antoine Lavoisier (1783): maybe not the first to recognize that water was a compound and not an element, but he certainly had a clearer command of the phenomenon than his English phlogistonist contemporaries, Cavendish and Watt.
• Antoine Lavoisier: Table of simple substances (elements) from Elements of Chemistry (1789); includes his criterion for considering a substance elementary
• Antoine Lavoisier: Oeuvres, (Paris, 1862-1893, 6 vols.): page images at Panopticon Lavoisier
• Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran: 1877 excerpt on discovery of gallium. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Pierre-Joseph Macquer: 1766 dictionary entry on principles discusses ultimate constituents of matter.
• Lars Nilson: two excerpts (1879, 1880) on the discovery of scandium. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Paracelsus: 16th century on alchemy and the metals. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to biographical information on Paracelsus.)
• Joseph Priestley: a report describing the discovery of oxygen in terms which continue to embrace the phlogiston theory; it is refreshing in Priestley's frank admission of astonishment at the results he describes. (Link to a biographical sketch of Priestley or a picture of him.)
• Joseph Priestley: 1789 paper skeptical of the idea that water is the exclusive result of burning hydrogen in oxygen.
• Lord Rayleigh, Royal Institution Proceedings (1895). An informal lecture describing the discovery of argon by the author and Sir William Ramsay.
• Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1774): excerpts from investigations of "manganese", describing the gas which we know as chlorine. (View a biographical sketch of Scheele or a drawing of his laboratory.)
• Carl Wilhelm Scheele: excerpts on gases from Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire (1777), including recognition that common air is not a single substance (##8-16) and preparation and properties of "fire-air" (oxygen, ##29-50).
• James Watt (1784): "Thoughts on the Constituent Parts of Water" (excerpt). (Link to a biography of Watt by Andrew Carnegie.)
• Clemens Winkler: two excerpts (1886) on the discovery of germanium. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. View a biographical sketch of Winkler.

Environmental chemistry

• Svante Arrhenius, Philosophical Magazine (1896) excerpt. Not a paper about acidity, electrolyte solutions, or the temperature dependence of rate constants, but rather about the greenhouse effect including an attempt to compute temperature effects in a world with twice as much carbon dioxide. (Link to a biographical sketch of Arrhenius.)
• Sydney Chapman, excerpted from "A Theory of Upper-Atmospheric Ozone", by Sydney Chapman, Memoirs of the Royal Meteorological Society 3 (26) 103-25 (1930). Copyright ©1930. Posted with the permission of the Royal Meteorological Society. This paper proposes a set of chemical reactions to account for equilibrium ozone abundances and their seasonal and spatial variation. (Link to biographical information on Chapman.)
• Paul Crutzen, "The influence of nitrogen oxides on the atmospheric ozone content", by Paul J. Crutzen, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 96, 320-325 (1970). (Copyright ©1970. Posted with the permission of the author, the Royal Meteorological Society, and the Journal.) This paper proposes the major ozone-destruction mechanism in the natural stratosphere. (Crutzen was one of three recipients of the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Link to his home page.)
• John Dalton. The author of chemistry's atomic theory studied the gases of the atmosphere first (read 1802).
• Michael Faraday, 1855 letter to The Times on the foul condition of the Thames. While not a formal scientific paper, this letter (at the ChemTeam site) shows Faraday's powers of observation and plain description turned to a topic which continues to engage scientists and policymakers.

Gases

• Joseph Black (1756). A description of several reactions involving carbonates and their release of "fixed air" (carbon dioxide). (View a biographical sketch or a picture of Black in the Edgar Fahs Smith collection.)
• Robert Boyle on the relationship between pressure and volume of a gas (Boyle's law), 1662. This excerpt and a facsimile are in a discussion of Boyle's law at the ChemTeam site.
• Henry Cavendish: determined that the "phlogisticated" part of the atmosphere (i.e., nitrogen) could be converted to niter, all except possibly a tiny fraction of less than 1% by volume (probably argon). (Link to a biographical sketch of Cavendish.)
• John Dalton: on gases of the atmosphere, including their partial pressures (read 1802).
• Humphry Davy: early paper on chlorine and its compounds (1811). This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• John Davy: 1812 paper describes preparation of a new gas, phosgene; describes the product of the reaction of phosgene with ammonia--apparently urea (although he does not identify it) several years before Wöhler.
• Peter Debye: excerpt of 1920 paper explaining the origin of cohesive forces in a van der Waals gas. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Debye.)
• Michael Faraday (1823): on the liquefaction of chlorine. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Benjamin Franklin. This founding father was a scientist as well as a statesman. In this letter he describes the effects of marsh gas to Joseph Priestley. Link to more on Franklin.
• Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac: 1802 excerpt reports that all gases and vapors expand the same amount with increased temperature.
• Jan Baptista van Helmont: three short excerpts from the border of alchemy and chemistry, including coining of the term gas and an experiment producing a tree from water. Link to biographical information.
• Jan Ingenhousz, (1779). Describes the ability of plants to "improve" the air in a process which requires light. This intriguing description of photosynthesis didn't get everything right, however. Link to a biographical sketch of Ingenhousz or modern description of photosynthesis.
• Antoine Lavoisier (1775-1777): Excerpts from three papers on properties of oxygen at the ChemTeam site. The first identifies oxygen as what combines with metals to make calces (and is available in full here); the second looks at respiration; the third examines burning of candles.
• Edme Mariotte (c. 1620-1684) on the relationship between air pressure and volume. (Many Europeans know this relationship as Mariotte's law, as opposed to Boyle's law in most English-speaking countries). Link to biographical information on Mayow.
• John Mayow: convincing argument that the air contains at least two portions, one of which nurtures flame and enters the blood in respiration (1674). Link to biographical information on Mayow.
• Dmitrii Mendeleev: "An Attempt Towards A Chemical Conception Of The Ether," an early 20th-century speculation envisioning the ether as the lightest of the inert gases. This item is available at Rex Research, a site devoted mainly to fringe science.
• Joseph Priestley (1772): instructions and observations on making carbonated water. (This item is available as facsimile images at the ChemTeam site.)
• Lord Rayleigh, Nature (1892). Interesting because of its frank admission of puzzlement and call for assistance in resolving anomalies which would eventually lead to the discovery of argon.
• Carl Wilhelm Scheele: excerpts on gases from Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire (1777), including recognition that common air is not a single substance (##8-16) and preparation and properties of "fire-air" (oxygen, ##29-50).
• Evangelista Torricelli (1644). Letter describing the barometer (includes an illustration). (Link to more information on Torricelli or view his picture.)
• Jacobus van't Hoff: osmosis and the analogy between solutions and gases (1887). This paper is at the ChemTeam site.

Kinetics and dynamics

• Svante Arrhenius: 1889 paper treats the temperature dependence of the reaction rate of cane sugar inversion, the "Arrhenius equation".
• Robert Brown (1829): on the random motion now known as Brownian Movement. (This paper is at the ChemTeam site.)
• Wilhelm Friedrich Ostwald: on catalysis, from 1894 abstract. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
• Ludwig Wilhelmy (1850): determination of homogeneous chemical kinetic rate law (for acid catalyzed inversion of sucrose).

Nomenclature

• Jöns Jacob Berzelius on chemical symbols and formulas (1814). Link to a biographical sketch of Berzelius.
• Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude-Louis Bertholet, and Antoine de Fourcroy: "A Dictionary of the New Chymical Nomenclature" from Method of Chymical Nomenclature (1787).
• Antoine Lavoisier: Preface to Elements of Chemistry (1789); discusses chemical nomenclature and the definition of element
• Antoine Lavoisier: Oeuvres, (Paris, 1862-1893, 6 vols.): page images at Panopticon Lavoisier includes complete Traité élémentaire de chimie

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