May in Chemistry

• Johann Jakob Balmer born 1825: Balmer series in hydrogen atom spectrum.
• Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet born 1839: invented rayon by forcing liquid nitrocellulose through fine glass capillaries. See instructions for a lab demonstration for making rayon.
• Paracelsus born 1493 or 1494 (date uncertain; May 1 is one date given): founder of iatrochemistry (the application of chemistry to medicine); developed a cure for St. Vitus disease; believed the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) were present in substances as three principles (tria prima): mercury (volatility and fusibility), sulfur (inflammability), and salt (incombustibility). [Link to writings of Paracelsus: The Treasure of Treasures for Alchemists, The Book Concerning The Tincture Of The Philosophers, The Aurora of the Philosophers, and Coelum Philosophorum (all at the Alchemy site).]
• Alexander William Williamson born 1824: alcohols and ethers (synthesis of ethers, with important consequences in organic structure theory); suggested the notion that catalysis can proceed through intermediate compounds; synthesis of ethylene glycol.

• Frank Austin Gooch born 1852: developed filter crucible (Gooch crucible); electrolytic analysis of metals; distillation for the analysis of boric acid.
• Elizabeth Cavert Miller born 1920: activity of chemical carcinogens
• William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle placed wires connected to a battery in water, observing its electrolysis, 1800. Read Nicholson's account of the experiment.
• George Claude Pimentel born 1922: physical chemistry (chemical lasers, matrix-isolation techniques); chemical instrumentation; chemical education

• Wilbur Olin Atwater born 1844: food chemistry; co-inventor of Atwater-Rosa-Benedict respiration calorimeter.
• Henry Howard Cary born 1908: Cary Instruments, which made spectrophotometers such as the Cary 14.
• Samuel Glasstone born 1897: physical and nuclear chemistry; The Effects of Nuclear Weapons; A Treatise on Physical Chemistry.
• Marcel Golay born 1902: electronics and computers in analytical instrumentation, especially chromatography.
• Jeffrey Hall born 1945: molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythm; Nobel Prize, 2017
• Herman Mark born 1895: polymer chemistry; process for production of styrene from ethylbenzene.
• George Paget Thomson born 1892: electron diffraction; Nobel Prize (physics), 1937. It has been noted that G. P. Thomson helped show that the electron is a wave (using this apparatus) while his father, J. J. Thomson, helped show that it is a particle.

• Agnes Fay Morgan born 1884: nutrition, particularly vitamin content of prepared foods; Garvan Medal, 1949
• Heinrich Matthaei born 1929: genetic code with Marshall Nirenberg
• Louis-Jacques Thénard born 1777: discovered sodium peroxide, potassium peroxide, and hydrogen peroxide; Thenard's blue (used in coloring porcelain); showed that caustic soda and potash contain hydrogen and oxygen; research on chlorine and alkali metals.
• Sigurd Varian born 1901: with brother Russell, invented klystron tube and founded Varian instruments (now Varian Technologies).

• John William Draper born 1811: first president of American Chemical Society; photographic pioneer; improved on Daguerre's process.
• Albert Ghiorso and co-workers announced the discovery of nobelium (No, element 102) by (left to right) Ghiorso, Torbjorn Sikkeland, John R. Walton and (absent) Glenn Seaborg at the Berkeley Radiation Lab (later named Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), 1958.
• Proctor and Gamble incorporated, 1905.
• Arthur Leonard Schawlow born 1921: lasers and non-linear optical spectroscopy; Nobel prize (physics), 1981.

• Henry Edward Armstrong born 1848: chemistry of aromatic compounds (including dyestuffs); science education; solutions (opposed to Arrhenius' and Ostwald's dissociation theories).
• Johann Joachim Becher born 1635: phlogiston theory.
• Julius Berend Cohen born 1859: laws of aromatic substitution; optical activity.
• Victor Grignard born 1871: developed magnesium-based reagent (Grignard reagent) used in organic synthesis; Nobel Prize, 1912.
• Paul Christian Lauterbur born 1926: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to medical imaging; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2003.
• Richard Moore born 1871: helium (He) for balloons and dirigibles; supervised production of radium salts in US.
• Jean Senebier born 1742: showed that green plants convert "fixed air" (carbon dioxide) to "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen)--the process now known as photosynthesis.

• Sidney Altman born 1939: proved that ribonucleic acid (RNA) can act as a catalyst in the cell; Nobel Prize, 1989.
• Arda Alden Green born 1899: isolation of phosphorylase, serotonin; bioluminescence (luciferase, luciferin); Garvan Medal, 1958
• Edwin Land born 1909: invented a light polarizing material (Polaroid) and an instant-developing photographic system (Polaroid Land camera, using US patent 2,543,181); founded Polaroid company.

• Bohuslav Brauner born 1855: chemistry of tellurium and the rare earths; predicted the existence of promethium (Pm, element 61).
• H. Robert Horvitz born 1947: genetics of organ development and cell death; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2002.
• Antoine Lavoisier was sentenced to death by the French Revolutionary Tribunal and executed by guillotine, 1794.
• Nevil Vincent Sidgwick born 1873: molecular structure and theory of valency.

• Manfred Eigen born 1927: chemical kinetics by relaxation techniques; Nobel Prize, 1967.
• Henry Gilman born 1893: organometallic chemistry.
• James Colquhoun Irvine born 1877: sugar chemistry.
• Michael Levitt born 1947: computational structural biology; Nobel Prize, 2013.
• Edward Weston born 1850: improved nickel plating and electrical instruments.

• Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff announced the discovery of cesium (Cs, element 55), 1860.
• Edward Frankland provides a clear statement of the concept later known as chemical valence (in a paper on organometallic compounds), 1852.
• Gaspard Monge born 1746: liquefaction of sulfur dioxide; metric system; best known as a mathematician for work on differential geometry.
• Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin born 1900 (with surname Payne): stellar spectroscopy; established that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium while at Harvard College Observatory.
• François-Marie Raoult born 1830: properties of solutions; discovered that vapor pressure in many solutions is proportional to the number of molecules per unit volume in the solution (Raoult's law); freezing-point depression; vapor pressure lowering.
• Rudolf Schoenheimer born 1898: biochemist: cholesterol and heart disease; isotopic tagging of biochemical molecules.

• Koji Nakanishi born 1925: structural determination of natural products.
• Donald Othmer born 1904: chemical engineer; co-founder and editor of Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology.

• William Francis Giauque born 1895: thermodynamics, particularly at very low temperatures; Nobel Prize, 1949.
• Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin born 1910: X-ray determination of penicillin and Vitamin B₁₂ crystal structure; Nobel Prize, 1964.
• Justus Liebig born 1803: "Father of agricultural chemistry"; quantitative organic analysis; Liebig condenser; distinguished fats, protins, and carbohydrates in foods. (View Liebig's monographs Familiar Letters on Chemistry, Animal Chemistry, and Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology.)
• First successful use of streptomycin on human beings, 1945.

• Marie Sklodowska Curie was appointed professor of physics at the Sorbonne, 1906 (the first woman professor there).
• Friedrich Karl Johannes Thiele born 1865: organic chemistry; unsaturated and nitrogenous compounds (particularly derivatives of hydrazine and guanidine); Thiele tube.

• George Fownes born 1815: organic and analytical chemistry; author of Elementary Chemistry: Theoretical and Practical, which went through many editions long after Fownes' death.
• Edward Jenner inoculated a boy with cowpox virus (smallpox vaccine), 1796. (This is an important step in the history of immunization but not the first one; see Lady Mary Wortley Montagu importing a practice from the Ottoman Empire to England.)
• Miguel Ondetti born 1930: synthesis and application of polypeptides to pharmaceuticals.
• Peter J. Ratcliffe born 1954: oxygen sensing in cells; Nobel Prize (medicine), 2019.
• Mikhail Tswett born 1872: invention of chromatography; plant pigments such as chlorophylls and carotenoids.

• Pierre Curie born 1859: piezoelectricity; magnetism (Curie temperature); codiscoverer with wife Marie of polonium (Po, element 84) and radium (Ra, 88); Nobel Prize (Physics), 1903 with Marie.
• William Hume-Rothery born 1899: metallurgy: alloys and intermetallic compounds.
• Lydia Sesemann became the first woman to receive a doctorate in chemistry, 1874, from the University of Zürich

• Adolf Ossian Aschan born 1860: alicyclic organic compounds (view his book, auf Deutsch); isoprene polymerization.
• Johannes Georg Bednorz born 1950: high-temperature superconducting materials; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1987.
• Theodore Harold Maiman first produced laser light (ruby laser, US patent 3,353,115), 1960.
• Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin born 1763: discovered chromium (Cr, element 24) and beryllium (Be, 4).

• Odd Hassel born 1897: conformational analysis; Nobel Prize, 1969
• Ferenc Krausz born 1962; electron dynamics via attosecond pulses of electromagnetic radiation, Nobel Prize (Physics), 2023.
• Joseph Norman Lockyer born 1836: codiscovered spectroscopic line of helium (He, element 2) in the sun; founder and editor of the journal Nature.

• Dow Chemical incorporated, 1897.
• Vincent Du Vigneaud born 1901: biochemistry of sulfur compounds; identified biotin; synthesized hormones oxytocin and vasopressin; Nobel Prize, 1955.
• Robley Evans born 1907: nuclear medicine, uptake of radioisotopes in the body.
• Bernard (Ben) Feringa born 1951: molecular machines, also known as molecular nanoscience; Nobel Prize, 2016.
• Thomas Midgley, Jr., born 1889: introduced tetraethyllead as an anti-knock agent in gasoline (see US patent 1,573,846); invention of chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants (see US patent 1,833,847), CCl₂F₂ and CCl₃F.

• John Jacob Abel born 1857: "Father of American pharmacology"; isolated epinephrine (adrenaline); crystallized insulin.
• Ralph Landau born 1916: industrial chemistry and chemical engineering; terephthalic acid, propylene oxide, and cyclohexane oxidation processes
• Max Ferdinand Perutz born 1914: determined the structure of hemoglobin and other proteins by X-ray diffraction; Nobel Prize, 1962

• Eduard Buchner born 1860: discovered alcoholic fermentation without yeast (due to the collection of enzymes known as zymase); Nobel Prize, 1907.
• Erika Cremer born 1900: theory and development of gas chromatography; chemical kinetics
• William Hewlett born 1913: analytical instrumentation and computers; Hewlett Packard.
• James Lind begins an experiment in which he controls the diet of sailors afflicted with scurvy, 1747; those who receive lemons and oranges show marked improvement.
• Hans Meerwein born 1879: oxonium ions and Wagner-Meerwein rearrangements.
• Francis Owen Rice born 1890: free radicals.
• Anton Zeilinger born 1945: quantum entanglement; Nobel Prize (physics), 2022

• William Nicholson died 1815 (birth date unknown in 1753): electrolysis of water; scientific journal publisher; made a hydrometer.
• Bengt Samuelsson born 1934: prostaglandins; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1982.

• Gladys Amelia Anslow born 1892: spectroscopy of proteins and amino acids; high energy physics
• Herbert Brown born (as Herbert Brovarnik) 1912: organoboron chemistry; carbocations; Nobel Prize, 1979.
• George Simms Hammond born 1921: organic photochemistry, including commercial developments; solution photochemistry; free-radical reactions.
• George Olah born 1927: carbocations and their role in hydrocarbon reactions; Nobel Prize, 1994.
• Louis Pasteur announced separation of optical isomers (mechanical separation of asymmetric crystals), 1848.

• John Bardeen born 1908: transistors and semiconductors; superconductivity (BCS theory); Nobel Prize (physics), 1956 and 1972.
• Edgar Fahs Smith born 1854: complex inorganic acids; history of chemistry (ACS Division for the History of Chemistry; Edgar Fahs Smith collection). Read his history of chemistry in America.

• Aaron Dexter appointed first professor of chemistry and materia medica at the newly organized Harvard Medical School, 1783.
• Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit born 1686: improved thermometers by using mercury; Fahrenheit temperature scale; investigation of boiling points of liquids.
• J. Fraser Stoddart born 1942: molecular machines, or mechanostereochemistry; Nobel Prize, 2016.

• First fluid bed reactor began commercial operation, 1942, in Baton Rouge, LA.
• Stuart Perry of New York city obtains US patent 3597 for a gas engine, 1844. The engine used turpentine gases as fuels; patent covered both air-cooled and water-cooled versions.
• Pieter Zeeman born 1865: splitting of spectral lines by magnetic fields (Zeeman effect); Nobel Prize (physics), 1902

• Helen Marie Dyer born 1895: nutrition: dietary substitutes and effects of nutrition on gastric function

• John Bailar, Jr., born 1904: discovered optical inversion and explained stereospecificity in complex inorganic reactions; coordination chemistry.
• Rachel Carson born 1907: author of Silent Spring (1962), a scathing critique of pesticides (including DDT).
• John Douglas Cockcroft born 1897: artificial transmutation of elements by bombarding nuclei (view apparatus and original paper with Ernest Walton); Nobel Prize (physics), 1951, with Walton.
• Theodor Curtius born 1857: chemistry of hydrazines and azides; Curtius rearrangement.
• Kasimir Fajans born 1887: radioactive displacement law; introduced concept of heat of hydration of gaseous ions.
• Mary Fieser born 1909: natural product chemistry; coauthor of Reagents for Organic Synthesis
• Robert Finnigan born 1927: quadrupole mass spectrometer.
• Joseph Oakland Hirschfelder born 1911: structure and properties of gases and liquids; statistical mechanics; flame propagation; quantum mechanics; chemical kinetics.
• Lars Fredrick Nilson born 1840: discovered scandium (Sc, element 21).

• First pure food and drug legislation at the state level passed in New York, 1881 ("an act to prevent the adulteration of food or drugs").

• Antoine Bussy born 1794: isolated magnesium (Mg, element 12).

• Julius Axelrod born 1912: catecholamines; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1970.
• John Herapath born 1790: kinetic theory of gases
• Henry Aaron Hill born 1915: first African-American president of American Chemical Society.
• Brian Kobilka born 1955: G-protein-coupled receptors; Nobel Prize, 2012.

• Louis Ignarro born 1941: role of nitric oxide signaling in cardiovacular system; Nobel (medicine), 1998.
• Austin McDowell Patterson born 1876: editor of Chemical Abstracts; contributions to chemical information and chemical nomenclature; co-author of A Guide to the Literature of Chemistry (1927).
• William Ramsay and Morris William Travers discovered krypton (Kr, element 36), 1898.
• Betty Sullivan born 1902: wheat biochemistry with applications to baking and flour; Garvan Medal, 1952.

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