March in Chemistry

• Antoine-Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in uranium salts, 1896.
• Edward Franklin born 1862: chemistry of nitrogen compounds
• John MacLean born 1771: first professor of chemistry at Princeton, established first U.S. chemistry laboratory.
• Archer John Porter Martin born 1910: partition chromatography; Nobel Prize, 1952
• John Alexander Reina Newlands read a paper on the "Law of Octaves" before the Chemical Society, 1866; it was not well received.

• Philippe Barbier born 1848: organic synthesis; coupling reactions via organometallic intermediates; first organomagnesium compound; longtime associate of Victor Grignard.
• Henry Jermain Creighton born 1886: electro-organic chemistry; industrial electroreduction of glucose to sorbitol and mannitol; US Patent 1,612,361.
• Norman Hackerman born 1912: electrochemistry; corrosion; surface chemistry of metals and oxides; electrical double layer.

• Gregory Paul Baxter born 1876: determination of atomic weights; that of lead led to dating of minerals.
• Frank Colton born 1923: invented first oral contraceptive, Enovid (US patent 2,691,028).
• Aleksei Yevgrafovich Favorskii born 1860: organic chemistry; acetylene, isoprene, alcohols; Favorskii rearrangement.
• Arthur Kornberg born 1918: synthetic pathways for the production of nucleic acids; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1959. His son Roger Kornberg would win a Nobel prize in chemistry.
• Andreas Sigismund Marggraf born 1709: isolated zinc from calamine; flame test to distinguish potash from soda; found alumina in clay; found beet sugar (sucrose) in beet root.
• Elmer Verner McCollum born 1879: vitamin D, nutrition and growth.
• Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin born 1894: chemical evolution and the origin of life on earth.
• Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard initiated a test of the idea of pasteurization by heating blood and urine in sealed flasks, 1862. The result of no observed fermentation or decomposition after 50 days supported the possibility of heating foods sufficiently to kill germs without significantly altering their chemical composition.

• Willard Libby and coworkers developed radiocarbon dating, 1947.
• Garrett Augustus Morgan born 1877 (or 1879): African-American inventor, including of a gas mask (US Patent 1,113,675)
• Richard Tolman born 1881: charge carriers in metals. [Thanks to Lucio Gelmini.]

• Emmett Joseph Culligan born 1893: water softening; founder of world's largest water treatment organization.

• Harry Coover born 1919: invented cyanoacrylate glue (US Patent 2,768,109)
• Joseph von Fraunhofer born 1787: discovered dark lines in solar spectrum (Fraunhofer lines)

• 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; classification of elements.
• 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.
• Fritz London born 1900: quantum-mechanical treatment of molecular hydrogen (Heitler-London approach).
• 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), later acquired by AkzoNobel)
• Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce born 1765: earliest photochemical imaging/photography
• Michael Rosbash born 1944: molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythm; Nobel Prize, 2017

• 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; graphite lubricants
• 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
• George Smith born 1941: phage display of peptides and antibodies; Nobel Prize, 2018

• 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.
• Henri Sainte-Claire Deville born 1818: first practical process for producing aluminum; discovered toluene and anhydrous dinitrogen pentoxide
• 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.

• 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
• Russell Earl Marker born 1902: steroid hormones; "Marker degradation".
• 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). Einsteinium (Es, element 99) is named after him; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1921. See a translation of his 1905 paper on special relativity and an online archive of his papers.
• 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.
• Moungi Bawendi born 1961: quantum dots; Nobel prize, 2023.
• Martin Karplus born 1930: computational biophysical chemistry; Nobel Prize, 2013.
• 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, now part of St. Joseph's University), 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; chlorofluorocarbons 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 translation and see some of his affinity tables.
• Charles William Eliot born 1834: president of Harvard University; professor of chemistry.
• Bettye Washington Greene born 1935: first African-American woman to work as a Ph.D. chemist in industry; latex and colloids at Dow. Link to a short film on Greene.
• 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 (in italiano) or visit his museum.

• Walter Gilbert born 1932: sequencing DNA; Nobel Prize, 1980.
• Walter Lincoln Hawkins born 1911: antioxidative additives to plastics; first chairman of ACS project SEED.
• David Keilin born 1887: discovery of cytochromes.
• Wolfgang Pauli's paper on the exclusion principle was published (auf deutsch) in Zeitschrift für Physik, 1925.
• Mikhail Tswett first described his chromatographic method to the Warsaw Society of Natural Sciences in 1903. View a later description by Tswett and an overview of modern chromatography.

• James William McBain born 1882: surface and colloid chemistry.
• Robert Andrews Millikan born 1868: measurement of charge-to-mass ratio of the electron and Avogadro's constant (so-called oil drop experiment); determination of Planck's constant; Nobel Prize (physics), 1923.
• Pierre-Joseph Pelletier born 1788: discovered quinine, strychnine, and other alkaloids; isolated toluene from pipe resin. See his samples of quinine.

• Neil Bartlett prepared the first noble gas compound, XePtF₆, 1962. [Thanks to Matt Morello for bringing this to my attention.]
• Daniel Bovet born 1907: pharmacologist; antihistamines (discovered pyrilamine); curare; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1957.
• Cold fusion announced at University of Utah press conference, 1989. Paper by Martin Fleischmann & Stanley Pons appeared very shortly thereafter. The announcement caused a great stir, then quickly faded (but not entirely).
• William Crookes in 1895 identified a new gas isolated by William Ramsay as helium (He, element 2, which had previously been observed as a line in the solar spectrum some 27 years earlier.)
• Charles Lathrop Parsons born 1867: research on beryllium (Be, element 4).
• Hermann Staudinger born 1881: chemistry of macromolecules; Nobel Prize, 1953.

• Georgius Agricola (also known as Georg Bauer) born 1494: "Father of Mineralogy"; described mining and metallurgy in De Re Metallica (1556, Read English translation).
• William Brownrigg born 1711: pneumatic trough for collection of gases; description of platinum (Pt, element 78).
• Adolf Frederick Johann Butenandt born 1903: research on sex hormones including estrone, androsterone, and progesterone; Nobel Prize, 1939, declined on instructions of Nazi government (received award in 1949).
• Peter Debye born 1884: dipole moment determinations (unit named after him); powder method of X-ray diffraction (Debye-Scherrer method; view reminiscences by Scherrer); electrolyte solutions (Debye-Hückel theory); intermolecular forces; Nobel Prize, 1936. (Years after his death, questions were raised over Debye's actions under Nazi rule, subsequent investigations suggest a more complex situation than initially appeared.)
• Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef, 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of oil into the waters of Prince William Sound, Alaska.
• William Frear born 1860: food and agricultural chemistry: beet sugar, cereals, culture of tobacco, soils, fertilizers.
• John Cowdery Kendrew born 1917: used X-ray diffraction to determine structure of myoglobin. (See 1958 Nature paper.) Nobel Prize, 1962

• Dorothea Juliana Wallich born on an unknown date in 1657: This chymist reported thermochromic properties of cobalt compounds; view her Schlüssel zu dem Cabinet der geheimen Schatz-Cammer der Natur [auf Deutsch]

• Christian Anfinsen born 1916: relationship of protein structure (especially ribonuclease) to biological function; Nobel Prize, 1972.
• Ferdinand Brickwedde born 1903: codiscoverer of deuterium.
• Alexander Crum Brown born 1838: modern structural formulae; rules for substitution in benzene derivatives; organosulfur compounds; theory of isomerism.
• James Bryant Conant born 1893: research on free radicals, hemoglobin, and chlorophylls; president of Harvard University; science and education policy; high commissioner and US Ambassador to West Germany.
• Joseph Francisco born 1955: atmospheric chemistry; president of the American Chemical Society.
• Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) born 1753: invented simple photometer; thermodynamics, including heat as motion (cannon boring experiment) and second law of thermodynamics; improvements in cooking and heating systems and animal breeding.
• Hermann Wilhelm Vogel born 1834: spectroscopic photography; designed a photometer; invented orthochromatic photographic plate.

• Nikolai Yakovlevich Demjanov born 1861: decomposition of aliphatic diazonium ions, Demjanov-Tiffeneau rearrangement.
• Johann Wilhelm Hittorf born 1824: electrolysis of salt solutions; transport numbers; ion migration; electrical discharges in gases.
• Polyethylene discovered by Reginald Gibson and Eric Fawcett, 1933. Read a report on the impact of the discovery 50 years later.
• Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen born 1845: discovered X-rays; research in heat capacity and heat conduction of crystals; initial Nobel Prize in physics, 1901. Read an account of the discovery of X-rays from Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction, edited by P. P. Ewald.
• John Sulston born 1942: genetics of organ development and cell death; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2002.
• Otto Wallach born 1847: terpenes and essential oils; Nobel Prize, 1910.

• Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne born 1837: coined the term enzyme (or rather Enzym in German).
• Glenn Seaborg and coworkers showed that plutonium-239 undergoes slow-neutron fission in 1941. Production of a plutonium bomb subsequently became a goal of the Manhattan Project.
• Michael Young born 1949: molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythm; Nobel Prize, 2017

• Carl Friedrich Accum born 1769: industrial chemist; helped found the coal gas industry; read his book on food adulteration.
• Julius Konrad Bredt born 1855: first described correct structure of camphor; Bredt's rule for bicyclic compounds.
• Aleksei Yevgen'evich Chichibabin born 1871: nucleophilic alkylation; amination of pyridines (Chichibabin reaction); synthesis of substituted pyridines (Chichibabin-Baeyer reaction).
• Herrick Lee Johnston born 1898: cryogenics; isotopes of hydrogen, oxygen.
• Madeleine Joullié born 1927: organic synthesis (tilorone, furanomycin, cyclopeptide alkaloids and cyclodepsipeptides); Garvan Medal, 1978.
• Donald Dexter Van Slyke born 1883: clinical chemistry.
• John Robert Vane born 1927: identification of prostacyclin (epoprostenol), a natural blood-clotting inhibitor; aspirin's pain relief mechanism; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1982.

• Alma LeVant Hayden born 1927: analytical chemistry at FDA; one of the first African American women to work as a scientist at a federal agency.
• Crawford Williamson Long first used ether as an anesthetic in 1842 (commemorated as "Doctors' Day").

• William Lawrence Bragg born 1890: X-ray crystallography (Bragg's law); Nobel Prize (physics), 1915, with father (William Henry Bragg). Read reminiscences by the younger Bragg and a biography of the elder from Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction, edited by P. P. Ewald.
• Robert Bunsen born 1811: co-inventor of spectroscope and actinometer; co-discoverer of cesium (Cs, element 55) and rubidium (Rb, 37); Bunsen burner, filter pump, a galvanic battery.
• Thomas Clark born 1801: water purification; introduced calcium hydroxide for softening water.
• Archibald Scott Couper born 1831: organic structural theory and notation; introduced bond lines in organic structure.
• William Jackson Pope born 1870: optical activity of asymmetric heteroatoms; mustard gas.
• Otto Nikolaus Witt born 1853: structure of dye compounds.

	Back to This Week in the History of Chemistry.
	Back to the top of the Classic Chemistry site