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October 7-20

• Niels Bohr born 1885: quantized planetary model of the atom; explanation of hydrogen atom spectrum; correspondence principle in quantum theory; Nobel prize (Physics), 1922
• Harold Walter Kroto born 1939: fullerenes. (See paper in Nature.) Nobel Prize, 1996.
• James Logan Waters born 1925: liquid chromatography; founded Waters Corporation.

• Henri-Louis Le Chatelier born 1850: effects of pressure and temperature on chemical equilibrium (Le Chatelier's principle); chemistry of silicates; mass action in explosives
• Mary Engle Pennington born 1872: her career combined bacteriological chemistry with refrigeration engineering to make her an authority on food preservation.
• Rodney Robert Porter born 1917: biochemist determined four-chain structure of antibodies; Nobel prize (medicine), 1972.
• Jens Christian Skou born 1918: ion-transporting enzyme; Nobel prize, 1997.
• Otto Heinrich Warburg born 1883: respiration and cancer; Nobel prize (Medicine), 1931
• Saul Winstein born 1912: physical organic chemistry; mechanisms of organic reactions

• Hermann Emil Fischer born 1852: synthesis of sugars and their stereochemistry (Fischer projections), uric acid, caffeine, and other organic compounds; Nobel Prize, 1902
• Max von Laue born 1879: X-rays and crystal structure (Laue method); Nobel prize (Physics), 1914. View chapters in Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction, edited by P. P. Ewald, describing Laue's discovery and subsequent developments of it, as well as biographical information on Laue.
• Pierre-Joseph Macquer born 1718: research on arsenates and platinum. View his Dictionary of Chemistry (1766) [Volume 2 and Volume 3] or read a couple of its entries or his Elémens de chymie pratique in English.
• Peter Mansfield born 1933: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to medical imaging; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2003.

• Henry Cavendish born 1731: discovered hydrogen (H, element 1); recognized water was not an element; investigated nitrogen-containing compounds and atmospheric nitrogen. Read his Experiments on Air. The Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge has had a long and distinguished history in the physical sciences.
• Yves Chauvin born 1930: mechanism of metathesis reactions; Nobel Prize, 2005
• Gerhard Ertl born 1936: surface catalysis; Nobel Prize, 2007
• Leroy Hood born 1938: automated DNA sequencer for Human Genome Project. Read his 2002 Kyoto Prize address.
• Arthur Lapworth (scroll down) born 1872: organic reaction mechanisms; organic ions.
• Ernest Orlando Lawrence invented cyclotron, 1930. (Link to a photo of his 11-inch cyclotron or to page on the 88-inch cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, or to a applet cyclotron simulation.)

• Friedrich Bergius born 1884: coal liquefaction; high-pressure chemical reactions; Nobel Prize, 1931
• Fausto de Elhuyar born 1755: co-discoverer of tungsten (W, element 74)
• Harold Johnston born 1920: kinetics and photochemistry; atmospheric chemistry, particularly of ozone.

• Josiah Parsons Cooke born 1827: introduced laboratory instruction to undergraduate chemistry curriculum at Harvard. (View his book on religion and chemistry.)
• Arthur Harden born 1865: enzymes and fermentation; structure of zymase; Nobel Prize, 1929
• Vladimir Kistiakowsky born 1865: electrochemistry and thermodynamics
• Ascanio Sobrero born 1812: discovered nitroglycerine.

• General Motors was incorporated, 1916.

• Friedrich Kohlrausch born 1840: electrical conductivity; dilution of strong electrolytes
• Alfred Nobel received his first of 355 patents, this a Swedish patent for preparing nitroglycerine, in 1863.
• Jacobus van't Hoff presented analogue of ideal gas law for the osmotic pressure of dilute solutions to Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1886

• Malcolm Harold Chisholm born 1945: inorganic and organometallic synthesis.
• First oral contraceptive, a steroid hormone norethindrone, developed by Carl Djerassi and co-workers at Syntex, 1951.
• Evangelista Torricelli born 1608: vacuum, pressure, barometer.

• William Thomas Green Morton demonstrated use of ether as an anesthetic at Massachusetts General Hospital, 1846.
• Henry Clapp Sherman born 1875: research on vitamins

• Lev Chugaev [search for Tschugaev] born 1873: inorganic chemistry of metal complexes; developed complexing agents for analysis
• Unocal incorporated as Union Oil Company of California, 1890.

• A ban of the artificial sweetner cyclamate is announced by the US Food and Drug Administration, 1969. (It has been resubmitted for FDA approval, but the application is in abeyance.)
• Christian Friedrich Schönbein born 1799: discovered ozone and collodion; research on hydrogen peroxide and guncotton. Read more on the discovery and early history of ozone.
• Harvey Washington Wiley born 1844: "Father of Pure Food Law" (1906) in US, and first administrator of it. (Visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.)

• Jacques Brandenberger born 1872: invented a process for making transparent waterproof films (US patent 1,266,766), more popularly known as Cellophane. (This is an early example of a synthetic polymer made from biological feedstock.)
• Samuel Guthrie died 1848 (birth date unknown, 1782): discovered chloroform, percussion explosives.
• Craig Mello born 1960: RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2006.
• Marguerite Perey born 1909: discovered francium (Fr, element 87)

• US administrators of Bilibad Prison in the Philippines changed rice rations from white back to brown rice, 1902. The turnaround in the hitherto increasing incidence of beriberi provides a clue in the discovery of vitamins.
• Vannoccio Biringuccio born 1480: metallurgy and armaments, De la pirotechnia
• James Chadwick born 1891: discovered neutron; Nobel prize (Physics), 1935

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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