November in Chemistry

• Antoine Lavoisier reported to the French Academy of Sciences that sulfur and phosphorus gain weight upon heating, 1772. Lavoisier's further research into the matter would change the way chemists viewed combustion.
• First detonation of a thermonuclear fusion bomb (H-bomb) at Elugelab Atoll, Marshall Islands, 1952.
• Union Carbide (now part of Dow) incorporated as Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 1917.

• Karl Benz receives patent (German patent 37435) for first automobile with internal combustion engine, 1886.
• DuPont begins mass-production of the first commercially available synthetic rubber, DuPrene neoprene, in 1931.
• Fritz Hofmann born 1866: synthetic rubber.
• Conrad Willgerodt born 1841: organic chemist interested in conversion of internal ketones to terminal thioamides (Willgerodt reaction)

• American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists founded, 1921.
• Daniel Rutherford born 1749: discovered nitrogen (N, element 7); distinguished between carbon dioxide and nitrogen; invented maximum and minimum thermometer
• Carlton Schwerdt announced crystallization of poliomyelitis virus at University of California, 1955.
• Jokichi Takamine born 1854: biochemist and industrialist, isolated adrenaline (epinephrine).

• Boris Aleksandrovich Arbuzov born 1903: organic chemist; free radicals of triarylmethane derivatives, terpenes, phosphorous-containing heterocycles
• James Douglas born 1837: mining engineer: Hunt-Douglas process for copper extraction; established first commercial electrolytic copper plant.
• Charles Kuen Kao born 1933: fiber optics for communication; Nobel Prize (physics), 2009
• Karl Friedrich Mohr born 1806: analytical chemistry, particularly titrimetric methods; Mohr's salt (ferrous ammonium sulfate, Fe(NH₄)₂(SO₄)₂.
• Charles Lee Reese born 1862: manufacture of dyes and explosives.
• William Hyde Wollaston presented his "synoptic scale of chemical equivalents" to the Royal Society, 1813.
• X-10 fission reactor, the first to produce large amounts of radioisotopes for further research, went critical at Oak Ridge, 1943.

• Neil Kensington Adam born 1891: surface film monolayers; two-dimensional state of matter at water-air interface; view his The physics and chemistry of surfaces.
• William Phillips born 1948: laser cooling of atoms; Nobel Prize (physics), 1997.
• Paul Sabatier born 1854: catalysis in organic chemistry; hydrogenation of oils to solid fats; Nobel Prize, 1912
• Marc Tiffeneau born 1873: organic molecular transpositions (e.g., Tiffeneau-Demjanov rearrangement); pharmacology.

• Isidor (Ian) Morris Heilbron born 1886: synthesis of natural products such as vitamins A and D
• William Albert Noyes born 1857: first chief chemist of U.S. National Bureau of Standards (now National Institute of Standards and Technology); editor of Journal of the American Chemical Society; University of Illinois Noyes Laboratory.

• Marie Curie (née Marja Sklodowska) born 1867: codiscoverer of radium (Ra, element 88) and polonium (Po, 84) with husband Pierre; other fundamental work in radioactivity; Nobel Prize (physics), 1903; Nobel Prize (chemistry), 1911. Curium (Cm, element 96) is named after Marie and Pierre.
• Eric Kandel born 1929: molecular mechanisms of synapse modification, including protein phosphorylation; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2000.
• Lise Meitner born 1878: nuclear fission; discoverer of protactinium (Pa, element 91). Meitnerium (Mt, element 109) is named after her.
• Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman born 1888: Raman effect (inelastic scattering of light; view brief announcement); Nobel Prize (physics), 1930.

• Lawrence Elgin Glendenin born 1918: codiscoverer of promethium (Pm, element 61)
• Herbert Sander Gutowsky born 1919: rotational and NMR spectroscopy.
• Darleane Christian Hoffman born 1926: production and study of transuranium elements; discovery of ²⁴⁴Pu in nature; Garvan Medal, 1990; Priestley Medal, 2000.
• Jack Kilby born 1923: integrated circuits; Nobel Prize (Physics), 2000.
• Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays, 1895. Read a translation of his first report of X-rays and an account of the discovery of X-rays from Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction, edited by P. P. Ewald.
• Johannes Rydberg born 1854: empirical relationship for series of atomic spectral lines later provided clues on atomic structure; Rydberg constant named after him

• Gail Borden born 1801: modern preserved food industry.
• Thomas Drummond heated a ball of lime in front of a reflector, 1825. This first practical use of limelight leads to improvements in theater and lighthouse lighting.
• Element 110 (Darmstadtium, Ds) created (3 atoms) at GSI, Darmstadt, Germany, 1994.
• Grace Medes born 1886: metabolism of fatty acids and of sulfur and sulfur-containing amino acids
• Robert Millikan coined the term cosmic rays, 1925, confirming earlier observations of unexplained penetrating radiation.
• Ronald George Wreyford Norrish born 1897: kinetics of extremely fast reactions; Nobel Prize, 1967
• Jack Szostak born 1952: telomerase; Nobel Prize (medicine), 2009.

• Andrés Manuel Del Río born 1764: discovered vanadium (V, element 23), which he called erthronium
• Ernst Otto Fischer born 1918: structure of ferrocene; Nobel Prize, 1973.
• Johnson & Johnson incorporated, 1887.

• Glenn Seaborg announced discovery of americium (Am, element 95) and curium (Cm, 96) on the Quiz Kids radio program, 1945, in response to a question.

• Aleksandr Borodin born 1833: organic chemist; better known today as a composer of operatic (Prince Igor), symphonic, and chamber music
• Jacques Charles born 1746: Charles' law relating temperature and volume of a gas; invented hydrogen balloon.
• John Dalton announced the first example of the law of multiple proportions in 1802 (in a paper on atmospheric gases). (Read Dalton's later words on atomic theory.)
• Antoine Lavoisier described to the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1783 experiments that show water to be a compound, not an element.
• John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh) born 1842: codiscoverer of argon (Ar, element 18); Nobel Prize (physics), 1904. (Read an account of the discovery of argon in Rayleigh's own words, and a plea for help along the way.)

• Edward Adelbert Doisy born 1893: research on sex hormones; isolated theelin (estrone) and vitamin K; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1943

• Leo Baekeland born 1863: invented Bakelite plastic (phenol-formaldehyde resins, US patent 942,699) and Velox paper; president of Electrochemical Society
• Frederick Grant Banting born 1891: extraction of insulin and its role in diabetes; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1923. See Banting, Best, et al. paper on pancreatic extracts and diabetes.
• Harry Barkus Gray born 1935: inorganic and bioinorganic chemistry (electronic structure, spectroscopy, mechanisms)
• Auguste Laurent born 1807: discovered anthracene; obtained phthalic acid from naphthalene; identified carbolic acid with phenol; nucleus theory of organic radicals; constructed a saccharimeter

• Albertus Magnus died 1280 (birth date unknown in 1200): discovered arsenic (As, 33); first to use the term affinity in the chemical sense; better known today as a Catholic saint and scholastic philosopher
• Humphry Davy named chlorine (Cl, element 17) and recognized that it did not contain oxygen, 1810. Chlorine had been called oxymuriatic acid.
• Carl Gassner, Jr. received US patent 373,064 for a dry cell battery, 1887
• Friedrich Wilhelm (William) Herschel born 1738: astronomer; discovered infrared radiation.

• Joel Hildebrand born 1881: liquids and solutions; introduced helium (He, element 2) into deep-sea diving

• George Thomas Beilby born 1850: invented process for retorting shale; industrial synthesis of alkaline cyanides
• Nicolas Lemery born 1645: pharmaceutical chemistry; influential and widely translated treatise on chemistry Cours de chymie [en français].

• Patrick Blackett born 1897: development of the cloud chamber method in nuclear physics, with which he documented artificial transmutation of nitrogen by α particles as well as electron-positron interactions; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1948.
• Seth Boyden born 1788: invented a process for manufacturing malleable iron, but did not patent his inventions
• Louis Daguerre born 1789 (or 1787?): photographic pioneer, inventor of the daguerreotype
• George Bogdan Kistiakowsky born 1900: reaction rates, science policy.
• George Wald born 1906: chemistry of vision; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1967.

• Humphry Davy announced the isolation of sodium (Na, element 11) and potassium (K, 19) to the Royal Society, 1807. (Read excerpts of Davy's announcement.)
• Yuan Tseh Lee born 1936: molecular beam study of gas-phase reactions; Nobel Prize, 1986.
• Mikhail Vasil'evich Lomonosov born 1711: suggested law of conservation of mass; suggested that heat was a form of motion; recorded freezing of mercury; opponent of phlogiston theory
• James Batcheller Sumner born 1887: enzymes and proteins; crystallized urease and showed it to be a protein; Nobel Prize, 1946
• Earl Sutherland born 1915: mechanism of hormone action, including role of cyclic AMP; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1971.
• Richard Zare born 1939: laser-induced fluorescence; chemical reaction dynamics.

• Karl von Frisch born 1886: zoologist, chemical and visual perception of fish and bees; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1973.
• Arieh Warshel born 1940: computational biophysical chemistry; Nobel Prize, 2013.

• Vladimir Nikolaievich Ipatieff born 1867: high-pressure catalysis; terpenes; petroleum chemistry (at Universal Oil Products Riverside Laboratory).
• Hieronymus Theodor Richter born 1824: codiscoverer of indium (In, element 49).

• Andrew Fielding Huxley born 1917: co-discoverer of ionic mechanism of neural conductance; grandson of biologist Thomas Henry Huxley; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1963.
• The Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center announced a process to extract water and oxygen from moon soil, 1970. (Learn more about human space flight and about water on the moon.)
• Dmitri Mendeleev's opinion that gallium (Ga, element 31) is likely identical to eka-aluminum is read to the French Academy, 1875. View early versions (1869, 1871) of Mendeleev's periodic table or his retrospective of the periodic law 20 years later.

• Rachel Fuller Brown born 1898: biochemist, co-discoverer of the fungicide nystatin (US patent 2,797,183), the first antibiotic used effectively to treat human fungal infections.
• William G. Kaelin Jr born 1957: oxygen sensing in cells, Nobel Prize (medicine), 2019.
• Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley born 1887: discovered that X-ray emission frequency is related to atomic number of elements. Moseley was killed in World War I.
• Johannes Diderik van der Waals born 1837: equation of state for non-ideal gases (van der Waals equation), intermolecular interactions (van der Waals forces), electrolytic dissociation, capilarity; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1910.

• Robert Banks born 1921: polyethylene and polypropylene (US patent 2,825,721).
• Publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work on evolution by natural selection, On the Origin of Species, 1859. Not a chemistry event, but surely an epochal event in science. (See also Alfred Russel Wallace.)

• Julius Robert von Mayer born 1814: conservation of energy

• Beckman Instruments (now Beckman Coulter) incorporated, as National Inking Appliance, 1934.
• Elizabeth Helen Blackburn born 1948: telomerase; Nobel Prize (medicine), 2009.
• Charles Hatchett announced discovery of columbium (niobium, Nb, element 41) before Royal Society, 1801. Read his paper.
• John Alexander Reina Newlands born 1837: classification of elements ("law of octaves")
• Charles Adolphe Wurtz born 1817: synthesis of hydrocarbons (Wurtz reaction), methyl & ethyl amines, phosphorous oxychloride, and glycol. Read his account of the Karlsruhe Congress.
• Karl Ziegler born 1898: polymerization through organometallic catalysis; plastics; Nobel Prize, 1963.

• Anders Celsius born 1701: set up a centigrade temperature scale with 0 at the boiling point of water and 100 at the freezing point. Today's Celsius scale has 0 at the freezing point and 100 at the boiling point.
• Lars Onsager born 1903: thermodynamics of irreversible reactions; Nobel Prize, 1968
• Chaim Weizmann born 1874: biological synthesis of acetone; first president of Israel.

• Maurice Arveson born 1902: petroleum technology, including hydrocarbon conversion patent 2,360,463; president of the American Chemical Society.
• First pure compound of berkelium (Bk, element 97) announced, based on work at the University of California, Berkeley, 1962.
• John Wesley Hyatt born 1837: inventor of the plastic celluloid.
• Antoine Lavoisier gave himself up to the revolutionary French government, 1793. He would be imprisoned until executed by the guillotine the following year.
• Alfred Nobel obtained a patent for smokeless gunpowder (Ballistite), 1887. (View information from the Society of Explosives Engineers.)

• Wallace Broecker born 1931: ocean cirulcation; carbon cycle; global climate change.

• Chlortetracycline, a broad-spectrum antibiotic (also known as aureomycin), was isolated by Benjamin Minge Duggar at American Cyanamid (now part of BASF Agricultural Products), 1948. (It was the first of the tetracycline family of antibiotics.)
• Monsanto Chemical Company organized, 1901. Now part of Bayer, Monsanto was a focus of controversies around genetically modified foods and pesticides.
• Andrew Victor Schally born 1926: function and synthesis of hypothalamic hormones; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1977.
• Henry Taube born 1915: electron-transfer reactions; Nobel Prize, 1983.
• Smithson Tennant born 1761: discovered iridium (Ir, element 77) and osmium (Os, 76); determined that diamonds are pure carbon.
• Egor Egorevich Vagner (also known as Georg Wagner) born 1849: terpene chemistry; permanganate hydroxylation of alkenes; Wagner-Meerwein rearrangements

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