September in the Periodic Table

A month by month list of birthdays and anniversaries from This Week in the History of Chemistry associated with the periodic table or with elements prepared for the International Year of the Periodic Table (2019). These record contain links to a searchable map, Places of the Periodic Table. Map links include the text "[map];" to see information associated with the location, click on the icon at the center of the map or search for the person or event mentioned here.

September 1

Francis William Aston born 1877: mass spectrograph and isotopes [maps] [Link to papers from 1919 and 1921 or view a photo of his apparatus]; Nobel Prize, 1922
Carl Auer von Welsbach [map] born 1858: rare earths; discoverer of neodymium (Nd, element 60) and praseodymium (Pr, 59) [map]; co-discoverer of lutetium [map] (Lu, 71).

September 2

Frederick Soddy born 1877: radioactive transformations (with Rutherford); codiscoverer of protactinium (Pa, element 91) [map]; displacement law and isotopes [map] [Link to three 1913 papers: 1, 2, and 3]; work on radium emanation (radon) [map] with William Ramsay [map]; Nobel Prize, 1921

September 3

First international conference of chemists, the Karlsruhe Congress [map], convened 1860: read Wurtz's account of the conference, at which Stanislao Cannizzaro [map] distributed his essay clarifying atomic weights

September 5

Publication date of pamphlet in which Jacobus van't Hoff proposed tetrahedral carbon [map], 1874; it was not universally embraced.
William Odling born 1829: periodic law [map]; lectured on chemistry at Royal Institution and St. Bartholomew's Hospital

September 6

John Dalton born 1766 near Eaglesfield, England [map]: 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.

September 9

Albert Ghiorso and Glenn Seaborg announced discovery of element 106 [map] in 1974. The nomenclature controversy around element 106 is over; the name seaborgium (Sg) selected by Seaborg's colleagues will stand.

September 10

Carl Mosander born 1797: discovery of erbium (Er, element 68), lanthanum (La, 57), terbium (Tb, 65) [map]; discovered "didymium" [map] (later resolved into neodymium and praseodymium [map])

September 12

Irène Joliot-Curie, daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie [map], 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 [map] in organic synthesis; Nobel Prize, 2010.

September 13

Burris Cunningham and Louis Werner isolated first microscopic amount of a compound of americium (Am, element 95) at wartime Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago [map], 1945. (See a photo of Cunningham and Werner.)

September 15

Neil Bartlett born 1932: prepared first noble gas compound [map], XePtF₆. [The first stable argon compound was reported in August 2000.]

September 16

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer [map] was signed by 24 nations, 1987.

September 17

Peter Cooper Hewitt obtains US patent 682,695 for mercury [map] vapor lamp, 1901

September 18

Edwin Mattison McMillan born 1907: transuranium elements; co-discoverer of neptunium (Np, element 93) and plutonium (Pu, 94) [map]; Nobel Prize, 1951

September 22

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 [map]; 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).

September 24

Georges Claude born 1870: invented neon light [map] (US patent US 1,189,664).

September 28

First meeting of Lise Meitner [map] and Otto Hahn, 1908. Their collaboration led, within 10 years, to the discovery of protactinium (Pa, element 91) [map], and 30 years later, to the experimental detection [map] and interpretation [map] of fission.
Ferdinand-Frédéric-Henri Moissan born 1852: first to isolate fluorine [map] (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).

September 29

Enrico Fermi born 1901 in Rome, Italy [map]: 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.

September 30

Antoine-Jerome Balard [map] born 1802: discovered bromine (Br, element 35) [map], hypochlorous acid, and dichlorine monoxide. (View the first sample of bromine isolated by Balard.)
Louis B. Werner and Isadore Perlman reported isolating first quantity of a compound of curium (Cm, element 96) [map] in 1947 at University of California, Berkeley.

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