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).

April 27-May 10

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

• Philip Hague Abelson born 1913: codiscovered neptunium (Np, element 93). Read a report by Darleane Hoffman about the discovery of elements 93 through 112.
• Wallace Carothers born 1896: macromolecules; invented nylon (US patents 2,130,947 and 2,130,948). Link to lab exercises in making nylon.
• Andrew Fire born 1959: RNA interference - gene silencing by double-stranded RNA; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2006.
• Albert Ghiorso (at right) and coworkers announced in 1970 discovery of element 105 (eventually named dubnium, Db) produced by bombarding californium-249 (²⁴⁹Cf) with nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N).
• Charles James born 1880: separation of rare earth elements, including independent discovery of lutetium (Lu, element 71).
• Antoine Lavoisier reported in 1775 that heated mercury forms red calx (HgO), while the surrounding air is reduced in volume and no longer supports combustion; heating the calx liberates oxygen.
• Robert Le Rossignol born 1884: engineer of the "Haber process" (or "Haber-Bosch process") for nitrogen fixation

• Alfred Bader born 1924: founder of Aldrich Chemical (now part of Millipore Sigma)
• Karl Barry Sharpless born 1941: catalytic oxidation, particularly stereoselective oxidation (e.g. Sharpless epoxidation), in organic synthesis; Nobel Prize, 2001 and 2022

• Atlantic Richfield Company incorporated, 1870.
• Harold Clayton Urey born 1893: isolated deuterium oxide (D₂O, sometimes called heavy water); co-discoverer of deuterium (²H); Nobel Prize, 1934.

• Albert Ghiorso and coworkers announced the discovery of mendelevium (Md, 101) at the Berkeley Radiation Lab (later named Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), 1958.
• Joseph John Thomson announced in 1897 the discovery of a body lighter than all known elements and a constituent of them all--the electron. Link to Thomson's 1897 paper describing the discovery, a photo of his cathode ray tube, or to his Nobel Prize address.

• Johann Jakob Balmer born 1825: Balmer series in hydrogen atom spectrum.
• Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet born 1839: invented rayon by forcing liquid nitrocellulose through fine glass capillaries. See instructions for a lab demonstration for making rayon.
• Paracelsus born 1493 or 1494 (date uncertain; May 1 is one date given): founder of iatrochemistry (the application of chemistry to medicine); developed a cure for St. Vitus disease; believed the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) were present in substances as three principles (tria prima): mercury (volatility and fusibility), sulfur (inflammability), and salt (incombustibility). [Link to writings of Paracelsus: The Treasure of Treasures for Alchemists, The Book Concerning The Tincture Of The Philosophers, The Aurora of the Philosophers, and Coelum Philosophorum (all at the Alchemy website).]
• Alexander William Williamson born 1824: alcohols and ethers (synthesis of ethers, with important consequences in organic structure theory); suggested the notion that catalysis can proceed through intermediate compounds; synthesis of ethylene glycol.

• Frank Austin Gooch born 1852: developed filter crucible (Gooch crucible); electrolytic analysis of metals; distillation for the analysis of boric acid.
• Elizabeth Cavert Miller born 1920: activity of chemical carcinogens
• William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle placed wires connected to a battery in water, observing its electrolysis, 1800. Read Nicholson's account of the experiment.
• George Claude Pimentel born 1922: physical chemistry (chemical lasers, matrix-isolation techniques); chemical instrumentation; chemical education

• Wilbur Olin Atwater born 1844: food chemistry; co-inventor of Atwater-Rosa-Benedict respiration calorimeter.
• Henry Howard Cary born 1908: Cary Instruments, which made spectrophotometers such as the Cary 14.
• Samuel Glasstone born 1897: physical and nuclear chemistry; The Effects of Nuclear Weapons; Text-book of Physical Chemistry.
• Marcel Golay born 1902: electronics and computers in analytical instrumentation, especially chromatography.
• Jeffrey Hall born 1945: molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythm; Nobel Prize, 2017
• Herman Mark born 1895: polymer chemistry; process for production of styrene from ethylbenzene.
• George Paget Thomson born 1892: electron diffraction; Nobel Prize (physics), 1937. It has been noted that G. P. Thomson helped show that the electron is a wave (using this apparatus) while his father, J. J. Thomson, helped show that it is a particle.

• Agnes Fay Morgan born 1884: nutrition, particularly vitamin content of prepared foods; Garvan Medal, 1949
• Heinrich Matthaei born 1929: genetic code with Marshall Nirenberg
• Louis-Jacques Thénard born 1777: discovered sodium peroxide, potassium peroxide, and hydrogen peroxide; Thenard's blue (used in coloring porcelain); showed that caustic soda and potash contain hydrogen and oxygen; research on chlorine and alkali metals.
• Sigurd Varian born 1901: with brother Russell, invented klystron tube and founded Varian instruments.

• John William Draper born 1811: first president of American Chemical Society; photographic pioneer; improved on Daguerre's process.
• Albert Ghiorso and co-workers announced the discovery of nobelium (No, element 102) by (left to right) Ghiorso, Torbjorn Sikkeland, John R. Walton and (absent) Glenn Seaborg at the Berkeley Radiation Lab (later named Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), 1958.
• Proctor and Gamble incorporated, 1905.
• Arthur Leonard Schawlow born 1921: lasers and non-linear optical spectroscopy; Nobel prize (physics), 1981.

• Henry Edward Armstrong born 1848: chemistry of aromatic compounds (including dyestuffs); science education; solutions (opposed to Arrhenius' and Ostwald's dissociation theories).
• Johann Joachim Becher born 1635: phlogiston theory.
• Julius Berend Cohen born 1859: laws of aromatic substitution; optical activity.
• Victor Grignard born 1871: developed magnesium-based reagent (Grignard reagent) used in organic synthesis; Nobel Prize, 1912.
• Paul Christian Lauterbur born 1926: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to medical imaging; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2003.
• Richard Bishop Moore born 1871: helium (He) for balloons and dirigibles; supervised production of radium salts in US.
• Jean Senebier born 1742: showed that green plants convert "fixed air" (carbon dioxide) to "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen)--the process now known as photosynthesis.

• Sidney Altman born 1939: proved that ribonucleic acid (RNA) can act as a catalyst in the cell; Nobel Prize, 1989.
• Arda Alden Green born 1899: isolation of phosphorylase, serotonin; bioluminescence (luciferase, luciferin); Garvan Medal, 1958
• Edwin Land born 1909: invented a light polarizing material (Polaroid) and an instant-developing photographic system (Polaroid Land camera, using US patent 2,543,181); founded Polaroid company.

• Bohuslav Brauner born 1855: chemistry of tellurium and the rare earths; predicted the existence of promethium (Pm, element 61).
• H. Robert Horvitz born 1947: genetics of organ development and cell death; Nobel Prize (Medicine), 2002.
• Antoine Lavoisier was sentenced to death by the French Revolutionary Tribunal and executed by guillotine, 1794.
• Nevil Vincent Sidgwick born 1873: molecular structure and theory of valency.

• Manfred Eigen born 1927: chemical kinetics by relaxation techniques; Nobel Prize, 1967.
• Henry Gilman born 1893: organometallic chemistry.
• James Colquhoun Irvine born 1877: sugar chemistry.
• Michael Levitt born 1947: computational structural biology; Nobel Prize, 2013.
• Edward Weston born 1850: improved nickel plating and electrical instruments.

• Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff announced the discovery of cesium (Cs, element 55), 1860.
• Edward Frankland provides a clear statement of the concept later known as chemical valence (in a paper on organometallic compounds), 1852.
• Gaspard Monge born 1746: liquefaction of sulfur dioxide; metric system; best known as a mathematician for work on differential geometry.
• Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin born 1900 (with surname Payne): stellar spectroscopy; established that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium while at Harvard College Observatory.
• François-Marie Raoult born 1830: properties of solutions; discovered that vapor pressure in many solutions is proportional to the number of molecules per unit volume in the solution (Raoult's law); freezing-point depression; vapor pressure lowering.
• Rudolf Schoenheimer born 1898: biochemist: cholesterol and heart disease; isotopic tagging of biochemical molecules.

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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