September in Chemistry

• Francis William Aston born 1877: mass spectrograph and isotopes [Link to papers from 1919 and 1921 or view a photo of his apparatus]; Nobel Prize, 1922
• Carl Auer von Welsbach born 1858: rare earths and their use in lighting; discoverer of neodymium (Nd, element 60) and praseodymium (Pr, 59); co-discoverer of lutetium (Lu, 71).
• Karl August Folkers born 1906: isolation of vitamin B₁₂ (whose deficiency brings on pernicious anemia); structure and synthesis of coenzyme Q10
• Vladimir Haensel born 1914: platinum reforming catalysts in petroleum industry (at Universal Oil Products Riverside Laboratory).
• B. Smith Hopkins born 1873: rare earths

• Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald born 1853: physical chemist; mass action, solutions, conductivity (Ostwald's dilution law); catalysis, particularly catalytic oxidation of ammonia; Nobel Prize, 1909.
• Frederick Soddy born 1877: radioactive transformations (with Rutherford); codiscoverer of protactinium (Pa, element 91); displacement law and isotopes [Link to three 1913 papers: 1, 2, and 3]; work on radium emanation (radon) with William Ramsay; Nobel Prize, 1921
• Frédéric Swarts born 1866: organic fluorides; Swarts reaction. He was the first to prepare chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs): the first one he made was CFCl₃, but he was also first to make CF₂Cl₂, the first CFC to become commercially important.

• First international conference of chemists, the Karlsruhe Congress, convened 1860: read Wurtz's account of the conference, at which Stanislao Cannizzaro distributed his essay clarifying atomic weights
• Ryoji Noyori born 1938: chiral catalysis of hydrogenation reactions with transition-metal catalysts; Nobel Prize, 2001.
• Fritz Pregl born 1869: microchemical analysis; Nobel Prize, 1923

• Stacy Carkhuff of Firestone (now part of Bridgestone) applied for patent (US 1,093,310), a non-skid auto tire, 1908.
• Lewis Latimer born 1848: invented a process for making durable carbon filaments for incandescent light bulbs (US patent 252,386)
• Stanford Moore born 1913: structural properties of proteins; catalytic activity of ribonuclease enzyme; Nobel Prize, 1972

• Eugen Goldstein born 1850: studied electrical discharges in gases including cathode rays (a term he coined) and canal rays. (Cathode rays are now better known as electrons; read about their characterization by J. J. Thomson in 1897.)
• Publication date of pamphlet in which Jacobus van't Hoff proposed tetrahedral carbon, 1874; it was not universally embraced.
• William Odling born 1829: periodic law; lectured on chemistry at Royal Institution and St. Bartholomew's Hospital

• Alexander Michailovich Butlerov born 1828: structural theory of organic chemistry. (View short excerpt of 1861 paper and full translation of 1864 paper).
• John Dalton born 1766: atomic theory; multiple proportions; gases of the atmosphere; Dalton's law of partial pressures. See his New System of Chemical Philosophy, part 1, part 2, and volume 2.
• Frederick George Donnan born 1870: membrane equilibrium (Donnan equilibrium) and chemical kinetics
• Luis Federico Leloir born 1906; biochemistry and metabolism of sugars, including the role of nucleotide sugars in carbohydrate biosynthesis; Nobel prize, 1970
• John James Richard Macleod born 1876: co-discoverer of insulin; Nobel prize (Medicine), 1923

• John Warcup Cornforth born 1917: stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions; Nobel Prize, 1975
• Stephen Hales born 1677 (or Sept. 17): pneumatic trough, collection and study of gases
• Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz born 1829: ring structure of benzene; tetravalence of carbon; structural theory of organic chemistry
• Drew Weissman born 1959: nucleoside base modifications that enabled mRNA vaccine technology; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2023

• Derek Barton born 1918: conformational analysis and free radical reactions; Nobel Prize 1969. View an early key paper.
• Viktor Meyer born 1848: discovered thiophene (read original paper auf Deutsch) and oximes
• Aziz Sancar born 1946: DNA repair; Nobel Prize, 2015.

• Albert Ghiorso and Glenn Seaborg announced discovery of element 106 in 1974. The nomenclature controversy around element 106 is over; the name seaborgium (Sg) selected by Seaborg's colleagues will stand.
• Milestone case for forensic chemistry begins with the disappearance of a young German girl, later found murdered, in 1898. For the first time, chemical analysis of blood stains (precipitin reaction) contributed to a conviction.

• Arthur Holly Compton born 1892: cosmic rays and X-rays; Compton scattering; Nobel prize in Physics, 1927
• John Kidd born 1775: codiscoverer of naphthalene in coal tar; author of 1833 treatise On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man, intended to show how God was manifest in creation.
• Carl Mosander born 1797: discovery of erbium (Er, element 68), lanthanum (La, 57), terbium (Tb, 65); discovered "didymium" (later resolved into neodymium and praseodymium)

• Aleksandr Erminingeldovich Arbuzov born 1877 (some sources say on 12 October): organophosphorus compounds.
• Carl Shipp ("Speed") Marvel born 1894: organic chemist; polymer synthesis
• Surveyor 5 lands on the moon, 1967, and begins elemental analysis of surface.

• Joachim Frank born 1940: cryo-electron microscopy of biomolecules; Nobel Prize, 2017
• Irène Joliot-Curie, daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, born 1897: production of artificial radioisotopes; Nobel Prize, 1935 with husband Frédéric. View a table of radioisotopes.
• Akira Suzuki born 1930: palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis; Nobel Prize, 2010.

• Burris Cunningham and Louis Werner isolated first microscopic amount of a compound of americium (Am, element 95) at wartime Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago, 1945. (See a photo of Cunningham and Werner.)
• Polaroid incorporated 1937. See National Historical Chemical Landmark.
• Robert Robinson born 1886: plant pigments, phenanthrene derivatives, and alkaloids; synthesis of tropinone; Nobel Prize, 1947
• Leopold Ruzicka born 1887: polymethylenes (i.e., cyclic alkanes), terpenes; synthesis of sex hormones; Nobel Prize, 1939
• Dorothy Maud Wrinch born 1894: structure of proteins

• Karl Taylor Compton born 1887: interactions of electrons with atoms, metals, and gases; president of MIT.
• Charles François de Cisternay DuFay born 1698: electrical researches; repulsion between like charges; phosphorescence; double refraction.
• Ferid Murad born 1936: role of nitric oxide signaling in cardiovacular system; Nobel (medicine), 1998.

• Neil Bartlett born 1932: prepared first noble gas compound, XePtF₆. [The first stable argon compound was reported in August 2000.] Thanks to Matt Morello for bringing Bartlett's birthday to my attention.
• Michael McElroy and Thomas Donahue presented a detailed chemical dynamic model for a moist Martian atmosphere, 1972.
• Traugott Sandmeyer born 1854: organic synthesis; Sandmeyer reaction; isatin synetheses (Sandmeyer diphenylurea isatin synthesis and Sandmeyer isonitrosoacetanilide isatin synthesis).
• Patsy Sherman born 1930: fluoropolymer stain repellent treatment for fabrics (Scotchguard(TM)), US patent 3,574,791

• Albrecht Kossel born 1853: chemistry of cells and proteins; Nobel prize (Medicine), 1910
• The Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer was signed by 24 nations, 1987. View the treaty and its subsequent amendments.
• Guillaume-François Rouelle born 1703: classification of salts.
• Albert Szent-Györgyi born 1893: ascorbic acid (Vitamin C); bioenergetics, carbohydrate metabolism, and cellular oxidation; Nobel prize (Medicine), 1937

• Peter Cooper Hewitt obtains US patent 682,695 for mercury vapor lamp, 1901

• Edwin Mattison McMillan born 1907: transuranium elements; co-discoverer of neptunium (Np, element 93) and plutonium (Pu, 94); Nobel Prize, 1951
• Marinus Los born 1933: imidazolinones as low-toxicity herbicides

• First underground nuclear test explosion, 1957. Previous US nuclear weapons tests were all above ground.

• James Dewar born 1842: liquefied hydrogen; invented vacuum flask (Dewar flask); phosphorescence at low temperatures; co-developer of cordite
• Organization, in Philadelphia, of American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848.

• Louis-Paul Cailletet born 1832: liquefaction of gases
• Louis Pasteur sampled pure air of French Alps, 1860. His experiments comparing this air to city air contribute to germ theory of disease and demise of the theory of spontaneous generation.

• Michael Faraday born 1791: electrochemist and physicist; electromagnetic induction; Faraday's laws of electrolysis; rotation of plane-polarized light in magnetic field; liquefaction of chlorine; Faraday constant is named after him. See also a letter by Faraday on the condition of the Thames, his lecture on the chemical history of a candle, and his collected papers on electricity (volumes 1, 2, and 3).

• Asima Chatterjee born 1917: natural products chemistry, particularly of vinca alkaloids with anti-convulsive and anti-malarial activity
• John Sheehan born 1915: synthesized penicillin-V (US patent 3,939,151)
• Clifford Shull born 1915: neutron diffraction; Nobel prize (physics), 1994.

• Geoffrey Burbidge born 1925: stellar nucleosynthesis of chemical elements
• Georges Claude born 1870: invented neon light (US patent US 1,189,664).
• Alexander Findlay born 1874: phase rule (including a monograph, The Phase Rule and Its Applications).
• Howard Walter Florey born 1898: isolation and growth of penicillin; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1945.
• Richard Hadley Holm born 1933: metalloproteins, especially iron-sulfur clusters.
• Robert John Kane born 1809: proposed existence of ethyl radical (ethereum) in 1833 (before Liebig).
• Severo Ochoa born 1905: discovery of an enzyme involved in biosynthesis of RNA; artificial RNA; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1959.

• Thomas Hunt Morgan born 1866: modern geneticist; function of chromosomes; Nobel prize (Medicine), 1933

• John Calvin Giddings born 1930: high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) pioneer; field-flow fractionation.
• Henkel founded in 1876.
• Archibald Vivian Hill born 1886: oxygen consumption in muscular action; Nobel prize (Medicine), 1922
• Joseph-Louis Proust born 1754: law of definite proportions (Proust's law); isolated grape sugar (glucose); distinguished oxides from hydroxides
• David Saylor received US patent 119,413 for portland cement, a mixture of magnesium clay with limestone clay, 1871. See kilns from his company.

• Adolf Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe born 1818: synthesized acetic and salicylic acids; theory of radicals; despite his achievements, he is perhaps best known for his vitriolic critiques. Link to Alan Rocke's book on Kolbe and his contemporaries.
• Silent Spring, a scathing critique of pesticides (including DDT), by Rachel Carson was published in 1962.

• First meeting of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn, 1908. Their collaboration led, within 10 years, to the discovery of protactinium (Pa, element 91), and 30 years later, to the experimental detection and interpretation of fission.
• Ferdinand-Frédéric-Henri Moissan born 1852: first to isolate fluorine (F, element 9); electrical furnace for preparation of metal and silicon carbides; Nobel Prize, 1906. Read his La fluor et ses composés [Fluorine and its compounds] (en français).
• Solvay Process Company incorporated 1881.

• Enrico Fermi born 1901: neutron-induced nuclear reactions; Nobel prize (Physics), 1938. The group of particles called fermions, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and the element fermium (Fm, element 100) are named after Fermi.
• Peter Dennis Mitchell born 1920: bioenergetics of cells; membrane electrochemistry of mitochondria; Nobel Prize, 1978.

• Antoine-Jerome Balard born 1802: discovered bromine (Br, element 35), hypochlorous acid, and dichlorine monoxide. (View the first sample of bromine isolated by Balard.)
• Johann Deisenhofer born 1943: three-dimensional structure of proteins involved in photosynthesis; Nobel Prize, 1988
• Hans Geiger born 1882: invented Geiger counter for detecting radiation; scattering of alpha particles in lab of Ernest Rutherford. (Read 1909, 1910, and 1913 papers.)
• Jean-Marie Lehn born 1939: three-dimensional stacked-layer polycyclic compounds; Nobel Prize, 1987
• Harry Mork, Arthur Little, and William Walker receive first US patent (709,922) for rayon (a name coined later for this "artificial silk" of cellulose acetate), 1902.
• William Morton uses ether in pulling a tooth of Eben Frost, 1846, the first published use of ether as an anaesthetic.
• Jean Perrin born 1870: research on cathode rays; Brownian movement as it relates to molecular reality; coined term "Avogadro constant"; Nobel Prize (physics), 1926.
• Louis Werner and Isadore Perlman reported isolating first quantity of a compound of curium (Cm, element 96) in 1947 at University of California, Berkeley.

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