This Week in the History of Chemistry		January	February	March	April
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See also This Month in the History of the Periodic Table (with links to a searchable online map).

May 21-June 3

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

• George Fownes born 1815: organic and analytical chemistry; author of Elementary Chemistry: Theoretical and Practical, which went through many editions long after Fownes' death.
• Edward Jenner inoculated a boy with cowpox virus (smallpox vaccine), 1796. (This is an important step in the history of immunization but not the first one; see Lady Mary Wortley Montagu importing a practice from the Ottoman Empire to England.)
• Miguel Ondetti born 1930: synthesis and application of polypeptides to pharmaceuticals.
• Peter J. Ratcliffe born 1954: oxygen sensing in cells; Nobel Prize (medicine), 2019.
• Mikhail Tswett born 1872: invention of chromatography; plant pigments such as chlorophylls and carotenoids.

• Pierre Curie born 1859: piezoelectricity; magnetism (Curie temperature); codiscoverer with wife Marie of polonium (Po, element 84) and radium (Ra, 88); Nobel Prize (Physics), 1903 with Marie.
• William Hume-Rothery born 1899: metallurgy: alloys and intermetallic compounds.

• Adolf Ossian Aschan born 1860: alicyclic organic compounds (view his book, auf Deutsch); isoprene polymerization.
• Johannes Georg Bednorz born 1950: high-temperature superconducting materials; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1987.
• Theodore Harold Maiman first produced laser light (ruby laser, US patent 3,353,115), 1960.
• Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin born 1763: discovered chromium (Cr, element 24) and beryllium (Be, 4).

• Odd Hassel born 1897: conformational analysis; Nobel Prize, 1969
• Joseph Norman Lockyer born 1836: codiscovered spectroscopic line of helium (He, element 2) in the sun; founder and editor of the journal Nature.

• Dow Chemical incorporated, 1897.
• Vincent Du Vigneaud born 1901: biochemistry of sulfur compounds; identified biotin; synthesized hormones oxytocin and vasopressin; Nobel Prize, 1955.
• Robley Evans born 1907: nuclear medicine, uptake of radioisotopes in the body.
• Bernard Feringa born 1951: molecular machines, also known as molecular nanoscience; Nobel Prize, 2016.
• Thomas Midgley, Jr., born 1889: introduced tetraethyllead as an anti-knock agent in gasoline (see US patent 1,573,846); invention of chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants (see US patent 1,833,847), CCl₂F₂ and CCl₃F.

• John Jacob Abel born 1857: "Father of American pharmacology"; isolated epinephrine (adrenaline); crystallized insulin.
• Ralph Landau born 1916: industrial chemistry and chemical engineering; terephthalic acid, propylene oxide, and cyclohexane oxidation processes
• Max Ferdinand Perutz born 1914: determined the structure of hemoglobin and other proteins by X-ray diffraction; Nobel Prize, 1962

• Eduard Buchner born 1860: discovered alcoholic fermentation without yeast (due to the collection of enzymes known as zymase); Nobel Prize, 1907.
• Erika Cremer born 1900: theory and development of gas chromatography; chemical kinetics
• William Hewlett born 1913: analytical instrumentation and computers; Hewlett Packard.
• James Lind begins an experiment in which he controls the diet of sailors afflicted with scurvy, 1747; those who receive lemons and oranges show marked improvement.
• Hans Meerwein born 1879: oxonium ions and Wagner-Meerwein rearrangements.
• Francis Owen Rice born 1890: free radicals.
• Anton Zeilinger born 1945: quantum entanglement; Nobel Prize (physics), 2022

• William Nicholson died 1815 (birth date unknown in 1753): electrolysis of water; scientific journal publisher; made a hydrometer.
• Bengt Samuelsson born 1934: prostaglandins; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1982.

• Gladys Amelia Anslow born 1892: spectroscopy of proteins and amino acids; high energy physics
• Herbert Brown born (as Herbert Brovarnik) 1912: organoboron chemistry; carbocations; Nobel Prize, 1979.
• George Simms Hammond born 1921: organic photochemistry, including commercial developments; solution photochemistry; free-radical reactions.
• George Olah born 1927: carbocations and their role in hydrocarbon reactions; Nobel Prize, 1994.
• Louis Pasteur announced separation of optical isomers (mechanical separation of asymmetric crystals), 1848.

• John Bardeen born 1908: transistors and semiconductors; superconductivity (BCS theory); Nobel Prize (physics), 1956 and 1972.
• Edgar Fahs Smith born 1854: complex inorganic acids; history of chemistry (ACS Division for the History of Chemistry; Edgar Fahs Smith collection). Read his history of chemistry in America.

• Aaron Dexter appointed first professor of chemistry and materia medica at the newly organized Harvard Medical School, 1783.
• Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit born 1686: improved thermometers by using mercury; Fahrenheit temperature scale; investigation of boiling points of liquids.
• J. Fraser Stoddart born 1942: molecular machines, or mechanostereochemistry; Nobel Prize, 2016.

• First fluid bed reactor began commercial operation, 1942, in Baton Rouge, LA.
• Stuart Perry of New York city obtains US patent 3597 for a gas engine, 1844. The engine used turpentine gases as fuels; patent covered both air-cooled and water-cooled versions.
• Pieter Zeeman born 1865: splitting of spectral lines by magnetic fields (Zeeman effect); Nobel Prize (physics), 1902

• Helen Marie Dyer born 1895: nutrition: dietary substitutes and effects of nutrition on gastric function

• John Bailar, Jr., born 1904: discovered optical inversion and explained stereospecificity in complex inorganic reactions; coordination chemistry.
• Rachel Carson born 1907: author of Silent Spring (1962), a scathing critique of pesticides (including DDT).
• John Douglas Cockcroft born 1897: artificial transmutation of elements by bombarding nuclei (view apparatus and original paper with Ernest Walton); Nobel Prize (physics), 1951.
• Theodor Curtius born 1857: chemistry of hydrazines and azides; Curtius rearrangement.
• Kasimir Fajans born 1887: radioactive displacement law; introduced concept of heat of hydration of gaseous ions.
• Mary Fieser born 1909: natural product chemistry; coauthor of Reagents for Organic Synthesis
• Robert Finnigan born 1927: quadrupole mass spectrometer.
• Joseph Oakland Hirschfelder born 1911: structure and properties of gases and liquids; statistical mechanics; flame propagation; quantum mechanics; chemical kinetics.
• Lars Fredrick Nilson born 1840: discovered scandium (Sc, element 21).

• First pure food and drug legislation at the state level passed in New York, 1881 ("an act to prevent the adulteration of food or drugs").

• Antoine Bussy born 1794: isolated magnesium (Mg, element 12).

• Julius Axelrod born 1912: catecholamines; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1970.
• John Herapath born 1790: kinetic theory of gases
• Henry Aaron Hill born 1915: first African-American president of American Chemical Society.
• Brian Kobilka born 1955: G-protein-coupled receptors; Nobel Prize, 2012.

• Louis Ignarro born 1941: role of nitric oxide signaling in cardiovacular system; Nobel (medicine), 1998.
• Austin McDowell Patterson born 1876: editor of Chemical Abstracts; contributions to chemical information and chemical nomenclature; co-author of A Guide to the Literature of Chemistry (1927).
• William Ramsay and Morris William Travers discovered krypton (Kr, element 36), 1898.
• Betty Sullivan born 1902: wheat biochemistry with applications to baking and flour; Garvan Medal, 1952.

• Sadi Carnot born 1796: investigated heat engines and laid foundations (Carnot cycle) for Second Law of Thermodynamics. Read his Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat
• William Standish Knowles born 1917: chiral catalysis of hydrogenation reactions; Nobel Prize.

• Edward Elgar born 1857: composer and amateur chemist [Thanks to Leopold May for drawing this to my attention.]
• Nils Gabriel Sefström born 1787: rediscovered vanadium (V, element 23).

• Werner Arber born 1929: restriction enzymes; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1978. Read an interview of Arber. bold red
• Otto Loewi born 1873: chemical transmission of nerve impulses; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 1936.
• Robert Burns Woodward synthesized chlorophyll, 1960.

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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