Selected Classic Papers from the History of Chemistry

	Selected Classic Papers
	from the
	History of Chemistry

The nucleus: isotopes and radioactivity

Corbin Allardice and Edward R. Trapnell (1949): An eyewitness account of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Francis Aston (1919): early report of mass spectra, suggesting that isotopes have integer masses. (Link to a photo of his apparatus or biographical sketch of Aston.)
Francis Aston (1920): early report of mass spectra showing isotopes of stable elements. This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture.
Henri Becquerel: two brief reports about radioactivity read to the French Academy of Sciences one week apart in 1896. In between the two reports, Becquerel realized that he was not dealing with ordinary phosphorescence! (Link to a biographical sketch of Becquerel and view a picture of a photographic plate from which he made his discovery.
Niels Bohr (1939): liquid drop model of fission in wake of Meitner-Frisch paper. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Harriet Brooks: 1904 description of a volatile radioactive product from radium: Marie Curie was not the only woman active in early research on radioactivity! This paper is at the UCLA site on contributions of women to physics, as is this biographical information on Brooks.
James Chadwick: 1932 letter and subsequent detailed paper explaining experimental observations by invoking a new particle, the neutron. These papers are at the ChemTeam site. (View part of his apparatus or biographical information on Chadwick.)
John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton: 1932 paper on the disintegration of lithium by fast protons: artificial transmutation. This paper is at Nature's celebration of physics. (Link to a biographical sketch of Cockcroft and one of Walton.)
Marie Curie: 1898 paper surveying the material world for radioactivity, finding it in uranium and thorium minerals, and suggesting that a new radioactive element may be found in pitchblende. (Link to a biographical information on Curie.)
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.
Kasimir Fajans: 1913 paper on the radioactive displacement law and isotopes. This paper is at the ChemTeam site as is this photo.
Enrico Fermi: 1934 note suspects (incorrectly) production of transuranic elements by bombarding thorium and uranium with neutrons. Noddack critiqued this conclusion on chemical grounds. Meitner and Frisch later explained these results as nuclear fission. Fermi's paper is at the ChemTeam site. View biographical information on Fermi.
Otto Frisch: brief 1939 note follows up paper with Lise Meitner on fission of uranium This paper is at the ChemTeam site. View a biographical sketch of Frisch.
Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden: 1909 paper reporting unexpected backscatter of alpha particles; interpretation of this phenomenon led to the nuclear model of the atom. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Geiger
Hans Geiger: from 1910 paper on scattering of alpha particles from gold foil. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden: 1913 paper comparing backscatter of alpha particles to the predictions of Rutherford's nuclear model of the atom. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann: 1939 paper reporting a result they barely believe themselves: barium, lanthanum, and cerium obtained from the bombardment of uranium by neutrons, then a more definite announcement of uranium fission. These papers are at the ChemTeam site. View biographical information on Hahn and Strassmann
Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch: 1939 paper invokes fission of uranium to explain neutron bombardment results. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. Link to a biographical sketch of Meitner.
Ida Noddack: 1934 note critiques Fermi's conclusion that he had produced transuranic elements by bombarding thorium and uranium with neutrons. Noddack's paper is at the ChemTeam site. Link to biographical information on Noddack.
William Ramsay & Frederick Soddy: 1903 investigation of the inert nature of radium emanation and the observation that helium is evolved from both radium and its emanation.
Theodore W. Richards & Max E. Lembert: 1914 paper on atomic weights of lead found different atomic weights for lead of radioactive origin compared to "ordinary" lead; authors cautiously interpret the results as consistent with the concept of isotopes. Link to a biographical sketch of Richards.
Wilhelm Röntgen: "On a New Kind of Rays", 1895 paper first describing X-rays. X-ray photographs of a human hand (fig. 1) and a compass card (fig. 2) accompanied the paper. [More information about Röntgen and X-rays: The New Light: Discovery and Introduction]
Ernest Rutherford: 1899 paper distinguishes between two types of radioactivity, which he labels alpha and beta. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch Rutherford.)
Ernest Rutherford: 1900 paper introduces concept of radioactive half-life and measures half-life of "thorium emanation" (now known as ²²⁰Rn). This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Ernest Rutherford & Frederick Soddy: 1902 paper that concludes, "radioactive elements must be undergoing spontaneous transformation." (This conclusion is found in the paper's final section.)
Ernest Rutherford and T. Royds: 1909 paper identifying the α particle with doubly-charged helium. The paper is worth reading for the careful marshalling of one last conclusive piece of evidence about the nature of the particles Rutherford and his co-workers had been studying for a decade.
Ernest Rutherford: abstract of a 1911 paper proposing the nuclear model of the atom to explain results of scattering experiments. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Ernest Rutherford: 1911 paper proposing the nuclear model of the atom to explain results of scattering experiments. This paper is at the ChemTeam site.
Ernest Rutherford: 1914 paper on the nuclear model of the atom, including reference to Moseley's work on atomic number. This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is Moseley's.
Ernest Rutherford: 1919 paper describing the bombardment of nitrogen by alpha particles. Rutherford concludes the nitrogen atoms are disintegrated in the process. So atoms are not indestructable after all, and the alchemists' dreams of transmutation are realized.
Ernest Rutherford: 1920 lecture describing the state of knowledge of nuclear structure at a time after the discovery of isotopy and atomic number but before the neutron; the standard picture included electrons in the nucleus.
M. L. Oliphant, P. Harteck, and Ernest Rutherford: 1934 note from the Rutherford lab describes fusion ('transmutation') of deuterium. These papers (preliminary note and more detailed paper) are at the ChemTeam site.
Frederick Soddy: 1913 paper which gives the rules for chemical transformations accompanying α and β decay; its discussion of "non-separable" elements all but defines (but does not name) isotopy, including a speculation that they are not limited to radioactive elements. (Link to a biographical sketch of Soddy.)
Frederick Soddy: 1913 paper which introduces the term "isotopes" for atoms which have the same nuclear charge but different mass.
Frederick Soddy: from 1913 review article; discusses isotopes and the displacement law
Silvanus Thompson: Thompson thought of performing the same sorts of experiments as Becquerel at about the same time; comparison of this paper with Becquerel's highlights the luck and genius of Becquerel. This article also illustrates the confusion immediately following the discovery of X-rays and radioactivity: the former were not believed to be electromagnetic and the latter was!
Harold Urey, Ferdinand Brickwedde, and George Murphy: 1932 paper announcing detection of a heavy isotope of hydrogen, H² (reprinted with permission of the American Physical Society). View biographical sketches of Urey, Brickwedde, and Murphy.

Organic chemistry

Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas: paper on acetic acid and trichloroacetic acid (1839) supporting Dumas' notion of chemical types. Link to a biographical sketch of Dumas.
Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas and Justus von Liebig (1837): organic chemistry differs from inorganic in that the radicals in the latter are simple, but in the former are compound. (View a biographical sketch of Liebig.)
Emil Fischer: 1891 paper on the structure of glucose and other simple sugars, a landmark of stereochemical reasoning from wet chemistry. This paper [pdf] is at J. Michael McBride's site at Yale. Link to a biographical sketch of Fischer.
Edward Frankland: complete 1852 paper on organometallic compounds; it contains an early and clear statement of the concept of valence. (Thanks to John Park for transcription.) Link to further information on Frankland.
Charles Gerhardt: 1853 excerpt on organic types. Link to biographical sketch of Gerhardt.
August Wilhelm von Hofmann: 1851 excerpt on amines and organic ammonium compounds, relevant to type theory. Link to a biographical sketch of Hofmann.
August Kekule: excerpt of 1865 paper on the structure of aromatic compounds. This paper is on Rod Beavon's chemistry site. (Link to further information on Kekule.)
Joseph Achille Le Bel: tetrahedral geometry of carbon (1874). This paper is at the ChemTeam site as is this photo.
Jacobus van't Hoff: optical activity and the tetrahedral geometry of carbon (1874). This paper is at the ChemTeam site. Link to a biographical sketch of van't Hoff.
A. D. Walsh, R. Robinson, C. A. McDowell, and J.W. Linnett separately discuss Walsh's proposed description of bonding in cyclopropane, 1947. These papers are at Daniel Berger's Walsh cyclopropane pages at Bluffton College.
Alexander Williamson: synthesis of ether and structure of ethers and alcohols (1850). Link to further information about Williamson.
Friedrich Wöhler: synthesis of urea from inorganic materials, conventionally regarded as fatal to the idea that organic compounds could only be produced through a "vital force." This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture.
Charles-Adolphe Wurtz on amines and their relation to ammonia (1849). (Link to a photo of Wurtz or a biographical paragraph.)

Periodic table and periodic law

Humphry Davy: 1812 paper searching for analogies among elements.
Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner: 1829 paper on triads of analogous elements and their classification. Link to a biographical sketch of Döbereiner .
Dmitrii Mendeleev, (1869): his first published periodic table and the abstract by which it was first known in Western Europe. (Link to a collection of on-line material about Mendeleev.)
Dmitrii Mendeleev, (1871): table from Annalen, suppl. VIII, 133 (1871). This item is posted at Chris Heilman's Pictorial Periodic Table site.
Dmitrii Mendeleev: excerpt from 1871 paper on periodicity of the elements focuses on the properties of the predicted element eka-boron, now known as scandium. This paper is on Rod Beavon's chemistry site.
Dmitrii Mendeleev, (1889): Faraday lecture on the Periodic Law, 20 years after Mendeleev's first work on the subject
Julius Lothar Meyer, (1870). A table of most of the known elements arranged to show family resemblances and a figure showing atomic volumes varying periodically. (Link to further information on Meyer.)
Julius Lothar Meyer: excerpt from 1870 paper on periodicity of the elements. This paper is on Rod Beavon's chemistry site.
Henry Moseley (1913, 1914): X-ray spectra of the elements reveal integers characteristic of each element, namely the atomic number. This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture and this essay on Moseley and his work.
J. A. R. Newlands, (1863, 1864, 1865, and 1866): his first attempts to find relationships among the atomic weights ("equivalents") of families of elements and accounts of his "law of octaves". The 1863 and 1864 papers are a long way from the periodic table, and even from his later law of octaves (1865 and 1866 items). (Link to a biographical sketch or view his picture in the Edgar Fahs Smith collection.)
William Ramsay, (1897): expands periodic table to make a new column for noble gases; predicts discovery and properties of neon. (Link to a biographical sketch of Ramsay.)
A. van den Broek: two letters on numbering the elements (1911 and 1913). These papers are at the ChemTeam site: 1 and 2.

Thermodynamics

Francis Bacon (1620): Before caloric and the kinetic theory, Bacon reviewed a wide range of observations about heat and related phenomena to illustrate his inductive scientific method, and suggested that heat is related to motion. There is even a mention of triboluminescent candy (in Table II, number 11). (Link to a biographical sketch of Bacon or to a complete text of Novum Organum.)
Joseph Black: 1803 (posthumous) paper on heat distinguished between heat and temperature and described specific heat and latent heat, even though treating heat as matter.
Sadi Carnot: Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (or "of heat" as this translation has it), 1824. This book is at the on-line Steam Engine Library at the University of Rochester. (Link to a biographical sketch of Carnot.)
Rudolf Clausius: excerpts from two papers on entropy. The first (1850) notes that heat is not indestructible, and examines how it can be converted to work with the flow of heat from a warm body to a cold; the second (1865) coins the term entropy and states the second law of thermodynamics. (Link to a biographical sketch of Clausius.)
Rudolf Clausius: 1857 paper on the kinetic theory of gases; derives expressions for the pressure of a gas based from analysis of collisions for average molecular speeds.
John Dalton, excerpts from A New System of Chemistry (1808). Describes how heat (caloric) was believed to combine with matter, especially gases. (See also Lavoisier excerpt in this section.) Heat capacity of gases proposed to vary inversely with atomic weight (like law of Dulong & Petit).
Humphry Davy: from Davy's first scientific publication (1799), some insightful ideas and dubious experiments on the nature of heat and friction. (Link to a biographical sketch of Davy.)
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit: 1724 paper observing several liquids to boil at constant temperatures. (Link to biographical information on Fahrenheit.)
Cato Guldberg and Peter Waage: "Studier over Affiniteten", describing law of mass action to the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1864. This paper is at the ChemTeam site, as is this picture.
Josiah Willard Gibbs: preface to Statistical Mechanics, published in 1902. This paper [pdf] is at the American Institute of Physics website. (Link to biographical information on Gibbs.)
John Herapath: excerpt of 1821 paper on kinetic theory of gases: heat is motion, and there need not be repulsive forces between gaseous atoms. Link to biographical information on Herapath.
Germain Henri Hess: 1840 paper on heats of reaction (Hess's law) This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Hess.)
James Prescott Joule: 1845 note on the relationship between heat and mechanical energy (the mechanical equivalent of heat). This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (View Joule's apparatus, or link to a biographical sketch of Joule.)
James Prescott Joule: 1851 estimate of the speed of a gas molecule.
Antoine Lavoisier: on caloric and its role in the three states of matter, from Elements of Chemistry (1789)
Antoine Lavoisier: Oeuvres, (Paris, 1862-1893, 6 vols.): page images at Panopticon Lavoisier includes complete Traité élémentaire de chimie
Henri Louis le Chatelier (1884): enunciates his principle concerning chemical equilibrium. Link to a biographical sketch of le Chatelier
James Clerk Maxwell: introduces Maxwell's "demon" and its implications for the second law of thermodynamics (1872).
Julius Robert Mayer: on the conservation or interconvertability of energy (or force or vis viva, as the paper says). Click here for a biographical sketch of Mayer.
Alexis-Thérèse Petit & Pierre-Louis Dulong: complete 1819 paper on heat capacities of elements, that contains the law of Dulong & Petit. (Link to biographical information on Dulong and Petit.)
Agnes Pockels: letter on surface properties of water, sent to Lord Rayleigh and later published in Nature. This paper is at the Contributions of 20th Century Women to Physics site at UCLA. (Link to biographical information on Pockels.)
François-Marie Raoult: 1882 paper on freezing point depression. (Link to biographical sketch of Raoult.)
François-Marie Raoult: 1887 paper on the lowering of vapor pressure.
Benjamin Thomson (Count Rumford): 1798 paper on the quantity and nature of the heat generated in boring a cannon. This paper is at the ChemTeam site. (Link to a biographical sketch of Rumford.)
William Thomson (Baron Kelvin of Largs): some thoughts (not all correct--see Keith J. Laidler, The World of Physical Chemistry, pp. 99-100) on an absolute thermodynamic scale of temperature (1848). (Link to a biographical sketch of Kelvin.)
William Thomson (Baron Kelvin of Largs): 1852 formulation of the second law of thermodynamics and description of an absolute temperature scale.
William Thomson (Baron Kelvin of Largs) (1865): an application of heat transfer to geology, leading Thomson to believe the earth is relatively young.
Jacobus van't Hoff: osmosis and the analogy between solutions and gases (1887). This paper is at the ChemTeam site.

Others

Justus Liebig: Familiar Letters on Chemistry (1843). This monograph on chemistry and some of its applications to agriculture and industry in the middle 19^th century is available courtesy of Peter Childs, Limerick, Ireland.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, volumes 50-67 (1757-77). This resource is available as page images at the Internet Library of Early Journals, Bodelian Library, Oxford University. The entire volumes are posted, so this resource spans the range of natural philosophy.
Louis-Jacques Thenard: 1819 paper announces discovery of hydrogen peroxide and describes some of its properties (including some painful tests: don't try this at home)

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