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March 7-20

• Antoine-César Becquerel born 1788: first to use electrolysis of metals from ores; grandfather of Henri Becquerel.
• John Hall Gladstone born 1827: refractive index of gases and its relationship to density.
• Arthur Hantzsch born 1857: organic acids; electrical conductivity of organic compounds; stereochemistry of nitrogen compounds.
• John Frederick William Herschel born 1792: invented photography on sensitized paper; introduced terms "positive" and "negative" to photography (as well as "photography" itself); astronomer and son of astronomer William Herschel.
• Stanley Lloyd Miller born 1930: Miller-Urey experiment producing amino acids from electrical discharge in reducing atmosphere.
• Ludwig Mond born 1839: discovered Mond producer gas and nickel carbonyl; Mond process for purifying nickel; cofounder of the company which later became Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI, now part of AkzoNobel)
• Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce born 1765: earliest photochemical imaging/photography

• James Mason Crafts born 1839: production of artificial minerals; pyroelectric phenomena of crystals, ketones and aldehydes; synthesis of benzene homologues (Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation).
• Farrington Daniels born 1889: solar technology; physical chemistry educator
• Otto Hahn born 1879: co-discoverer of protactinium (Pa, element 91); co-discoverer of nuclear fission; Nobel Prize, 1944.
• Edward Calvin Kendall born 1886: isolated thyroxine; work on adrenal hormones; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1950
• Carl Mannich born 1877: aminomethylation (Mannich reaction).
• James Sheridan Muspratt born 1821: author of Chemistry, Theoretical, Practical and Analytical as applied and relating to the Arts and Manufactures; son of James Muspratt, manufacture of acids

• Edward Goodrich Acheson born 1856: development of electric furnace for production of silicon carbide ("Carborundum"); founder of Carborundum Corporation (now part of Saint-Gobain Advanced Ceramics Corp.); graphite lubricants: Oildag, Aquadag, and Gredag
• Walter Kohn born 1923: density functional theory in atomic and molecular structure calculations; Nobel Prize, 1998.
• Stanley Thompson born 1912: co-discoverer of berkelium (Bk, element 97), californium (Cf, 98), einsteinium (Es, 99), fermium (Fm, 100), and mendelevium (Md, 101).

• Johann Rudolf Glauber died 1668 (birth date unknown in 1604): Glauber's salt (sal mirabile, sodium sulfate).
• William McMurtrie born 1851: conversion of sewage to fertilizer; president of American Chemical Society
• Jeremias Benjamin Richter born 1762: law of equivalent proportions; stoichiometry

• Niels Janniksen Bjerrum born 1879: electrochemistry; chromic salts; electrolytic dissociation; zwitterionic form of amino acids.
• Nicolaas Bloembergen born 1920: laser spectroscopy and non-linear optics; Nobel Prize (physics), 1981.
• Cato Guldberg and Peter Waage presented paper, "Studier over Affiniteten", describing law of mass action to the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1864.
• Henri Sainte-Claire Deville born 1818: first practical process for producing aluminum; discovered toluene and anhydrous dinitrogen pentoxide

• Leslie G. S. Brooker born 1902: chemistry of photography.
• John Frederic Daniell born 1790: invented Daniell electrochemical cell (a galvanic cell involving copper, zinc, and solutions of their sulfates).
• Charles Friedel born 1832: synthesis of benzene homologues (Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation).
• Gustav Robert Kirchhoff born 1824: co-inventor of spectroscope; co-discoverer of cesium (Cs, element 55) and rubidium (Rb, 37); discovered that bodies which emit radiation absorb the same type of radiation when cool (Kirchhoff's law); Kirchhoff's laws of electrical circuits
• William Henry Perkin born 1838: first made mauveine (first aniline dye, 1856; view sample); Perkin reaction for the condensation of unsaturated aromatic acids; alicyclic synthesis; Perkin rearrangement (ring contraction); synthesis of coumarin and tartaric acid.
• Michael Polanyi born 1891: crystal structures; chemical kinetics; father of Nobel laureate John Polanyi
• James Watson described the double helix structure of DNA in a letter to Max Delbrück, 1953.

• Joseph Priestley born 1733: pioneer pneumatic chemist; discovered oxygen (O, element 8, which he called "dephlogisticated air"), ammonia, hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides; Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air; advocate of the phlogiston theory.
• John Hasbrouck van Vleck born 1899: electric and magnetic properties of solids; crystal field and ligand field theory; electron correlcation; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1977.

• Ronald Breslow born 1931: organic chemistry (aromaticity and antiaromaticity) and biochemistry (reaction mechanisms and artificial enzymes). (Click here to see research interests.)
• Paul Ehrlich born 1854: immunity and chemotherapy; discovered Salversan and neosalversan; improved laboratory staining techniques; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1908
• Albert Einstein born 1879: fundamental contributions in physics including theory of relativity; photoelectric effect; spontaneous and stimulated emission; fundamental contributions to quantum and statistical physics (Bose-Einstein distribution); Nobel Prize (Physics), 1921
• Ernst Späth born 1886: synthesis of alkaloid natural products including nicotine and harmaline.
• Thomas Leopold Willson born 1860: electrothermal furnace; manufacture of calcium carbide.

• Zhores Ivanovich Alferov born 1930: III-V semiconductor heterostructures; Nobel Prize (physics), 2000.
• Johann Josef Loschmidt born 1821: space-filling formulas of many organic compounds; Loschmidt number (number of molecules per unit volume of gas); size of atoms.
• Franciscus Sylvius born 1614; founder of iatrochemical school of medicine.

• Susan Hayhurst was the first American woman to graduate from pharmacy school (Philadelphia College of Pharmacy), 1883.
• First liquid-fueled rocket flight launched in Auburn, MA, by Robert Goddard, 1926.

• Carl Löwig born 1803: a discoverer of bromine (Br, element 35).
• Norbert Rillieux born 1806: invented multiple effect evaporator for sugar refining (US Patent 4879)

• Franz Fischer born 1877: coal chemistry; Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.
• Walter Norman Haworth born 1883: synthesis of ascorbic acid (vitamin C); research on sugars and dextran; Nobel Prize, 1937
• Frédéric Joliot-Curie born (as Jean-Frédéric Joliot) 1900: experimental determination that neutrons are emitted in nuclear fission; production of artificial radioisotopes (with wife Irène Joliot-Curie); Nobel Prize, 1935 (with Irène). View a table of radioisotopes.
• Mario Molina born 1943: atmospheric chemistry; CFCs and ozone depletion; Nobel Prize, 1995

• AZT is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as a treatment of AIDS, 1987.
• Bausch & Lomb incorporated, 1908, as Bausch & Lomb Optical Co.
• Torbern Bergman born 1735: work on carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide; preparation of artificial mineral water. Read his Dissertation on Elective Attractions in English.
• Charles William Eliot born 1834: president of Harvard University; professor of chemistry.
• Maud Menten born 1879: enzyme kinetics (Michaelis-Menten equation), protein electrophoresis.
• Erwin Neher born 1944: single-ion channels in biological cells; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1991.
• Alessandro Volta wrote letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, describing a battery, 1800. Read texts of Volta or see images of his instruments.

Dates are given according to the Gregorian calendar to the extent I could find them. (Note: this applies particularly to 19^th-century Russians.)

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