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See also This Month in the History of the Periodic Table (with links to a searchable online map).

October 27-November 9

50-year, 100-year, 150-year, etc. anniversaries appear in bold red.
See also Today in Science History by Ian Ellis.

• Pierre-Eugéne-Marcellin Berthelot born 1827: thermochemistry; atomic skeptic.
• Gustav Kirchhoff announces invention of spectroscope, 1859.
• Antoine Lavoisier and wife Marie Paulze survive a munitions explosion, 1788.
• John Edward Lennard-Jones born 1894: interatomic forces (Lennard-Jones potential).

• Christopher Kelk Ingold born 1893: stereoisomers; Cahn-Ingold-Prelog rules; physical organic chemistry; resonance.
• Richard Laurence Millington Synge born 1914: partition chromatography; Nobel Prize, 1952
• Zygmunt von Wróblewski born 1845: liquefaction of gases

• Carl Djerassi born 1923: oral contraceptives (US patent 2,744,122); science in fiction
• Robert Bowie Owens [search for Owens] born 1870: thorium radiation and thorium emanation, later called radon

• Gerhard Domagk born 1895: antibiotic effect of the sulfanilamide drug prontosil; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1939.
• Hermann Franz Moritz Kopp born 1817: atomic and molecular volume.
• D. W. Richards, Jr. born 1895: cardiac catheterization; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1956.
• Max Tishler born 1906: synthetic pharmaceutical chemistry: antibiotics (US patents 2,261,608 and 2,404,199) .

• Adolf von Baeyer born 1835: organic dyes (indigo and triphenylmethane dyes), introduced concept of ring strain (still a useful concept); Nobel Prize, 1905.
• Richard Barry Bernstein born 1923: reaction dynamics using molecular beams.
• Josef Habermann born 1841: protein analysis.
• John Pople born 1925: computational quantum chemistry; Nobel Prize, 1998.
• Joseph Wilson Swan born 1828: carbon process for printing photographs; carbon-filament light bulb.
• Walter Weldon born 1832: industrial 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.

Dates are given according to the Gregorian calendar to the extent I could find them. (Note: this applies particularly to 19^th-century Russians.)

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