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).

December 15-28

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

• Antoine-Henri Becqurel born 1852: discovered radioactivity (Becquerel rays) from uranium salts; Nobel Prize (physics), 1903.
• Arthur Dehon Little born 1863: industrial and engineering chemistry, founded Arthur D. Little, Inc.; read a pamphlet on research and industrial development.
• Maurice Wilkins born 1916: X-ray crystallography of biological materials; DNA structure; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1962.

• Johann Wilhelm Ritter born 1776: electrolyzed water, collecting hydrogen and oxygen; discovered ultraviolet rays

• Allied Chemical and Dye Corp. (later part of Allied Signal, which merged with Honeywell) incorporated 1920.
• Émilie du Châtelet born 1706: chemical nature of fire (Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu [en français]); better known for her mathematics and for her association with Voltaire.
• Humphry Davy born 1778: isolated barium (Ba, element 56), calcium (Ca, 20), magnesium (Mg, 12), potassium (K, 19), sodium (Na, 11), and strontium (Sr, 38); co-discovered boron (B, 5); recognized as elementary and named chlorine (Cl, 17); invented Davy mine safety lamp. His first work on heat and friction includes some insightful ideas and dubious experiments. Read some of his writings on sodium and potassium and on chlorine and its compounds. Read his Researches, Chemical and Philosophical; Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide and his Elements of Chemical Philosophy.
• Michael Faraday enunciated first law of electrolysis, "Chemical power, like magnetic force, is in direct proportion to the absolute quantity of electricity which passes," 1832.
• Fission of uranium (U, element 92) by neutrons detected by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin, 1938; the interpretation of the event as fission would await a paper by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch. See and read about the apparatus they used, on display at the Deutsches Museum.
• Willard Frank Libby born 1908: developed carbon dating; Nobel Prize, 1960.
• John Lawrence Smith born 1818: toxicology and chemistry of minerals

• Mary Letitia Caldwell born 1890: isolation, structure, and activity of starch enzymes (amylases). Read her doctoral dissertation on amino acids.
• Joseph John (J. J.) Thomson born 1856: characterized "cathode rays", discovering a particle (the electron) with much smaller mass to charge ratio than any known up to that time; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1906. Thomson went on to determine the charge of cathode rays and identify them with other manifestations of electrons; his work on positive rays led to the development of mass spectroscopy; his work on the structure of atoms include his "plum pudding model" and an argument that the number of electrons in an atom was comparable to its atomic mass (in atomic mass units).
• Edgar Bright Wilson born 1908: vibrational spectroscopy (Molecular Vibrations [review, pdf]).

• Thomas Andrews born 1813: discovered critical temperatures of gases (temperature above which they cannot be liquefied); read his lecture on the continuity of the gaseous and liquid states.
• Berkelium (Bk, element 97) discovered by (left to right) Kenneth Street, Jr., Stanley G. Thompson, Glenn T. Seaborg, and Albert Ghiorso using ion-exchange chromatography at the Berkeley Radiation Lab (later named Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), 1949.
• Yvette Cauchois born 1908: x-ray spectroscopy (Cauchois spectrometer, use of synchrotron x-rays)
• Pauline Beery Mack born 1891: nutritional content of meat and vegetables; bone density studies; laundering behavior of textiles; Garvan Medal, 1950.
• Alan Walsh born 1916: atomic absorption spectroscopy.

• Einsteinium (Es, element 99) discovered by (left to right) Louise Smith, Sherman Fried, Gary Higgins; (back row) Albert Ghiorso, Rod Spence, Glenn Seaborg, Paul Fields and John Huizenga using ion-exchange chromatography at at the Berkeley Radiation Lab (later named Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1952.
• Thomas Graham born 1805: absorption of gases, osmosis, colloids, and dialysis; Graham's law of effusion
• Jaroslav Heyrovsky born 1890: invented polarographic method of analysis; Nobel Prize, 1959.

• John Mayow baptized 1641 (birth date uncertain): discovered that air contained two gases, one of which ("spiritus nitro-aerous") supported life and combustion. Read his Tractatus Quinque Medico-physici in English.
• Hermann Joseph Muller born 1890: theory of genes; mutation by X-rays; Nobel Prize (medicine), 1946.

• St. Elmo Brady born 1884: first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry.
• William Lloyd Evans born 1870: chemistry of carbohydrates; click for more details on carbohydrate nomenclature.
• Arie Jan Haagen-Smit born 1900: nature and source of smog; smog abatement.
• Vladimir Markovnikov born 1838: synthesis of cyclobutane and cyclopentane derivatives; Markovnikov's rule for additions to alkenes. (Read a recent article about a modern attempt to replicate Markovnikov's work on his eponymous rule.)
• John Clarke Slater born 1900: orbital approaches to quantum chemistry (Slater-type orbitals, Slater determinant); tetrahedral carbon compounds.
• M. Stanley Whittingham born 1941: lithium ion batteries; Nobel Prize, 2019

• Axel Fredrik Cronstedt born 1722: discovered nickel (Ni, element 28) and zeolite; classification of minerals
• Anna Jane Harrison born 1912: first female president of American Chemical Society (1978); president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1983-84).
• Stefan Hell born 1962: very high-resolution fluorescence microscopy; Nobel Prize, 2014.
• Helen Abbott Michael born 1857: chemical composition of plants; synthetic organic chemistry; author (under the pseudonym Celen Sabbrin), of Science and Philosophy in Art.
• Paul Schützenberger born 1829: physiological chemistry.

• James Prescott Joule born 1818: thermodynamics; mechanical equivalent of heat (Read his paper and view his apparatus); Joule-Thomson effect (temperature of gas falls when the gas expands without doing work); kinetic theory of gases
• Benjamin Rush born 1745: signer of Declaration of Independence; published first American chemistry textbook
• Augustus Vernon-Harcourt born 1834: invented 10-candlepower standard lamp using pentane

• Herman Frasch born 1851: sulfur mining (Frasch process, developed in Louisiana)
• William Gregor born 1761: discovered titanium (Ti, element 22); analysis of minerals
• Gerhard Herzberg born 1904: spectroscopic analysis of electronic structure and geometry of molecules and radicals; Nobel Prize, 1971
• Isaac Newton born 1642: made fundamental contributions to physics (gravitation, optics, mechanics) and mathematics (calculus); researcher in chymistry. (Read his ideas about atoms and the rest of his Opticks.)
• Ludwig Ferdinand Wilhelmy born 1812: chemical kinetics; first measurement of homogeneous reaction rate (or see entire paper auf Deutsch).
• Adolf Windaus born 1876: synthesis of histamine; structure of cholesterol; research on steroids; Nobel Prize, 1928

• Marie and Pierre Curie discover radium (element 88, Ra), 1898.
• Ali Javan born 1928: inventor of helium-neon laser, the first gas laser and first continuous-wave (CW) laser.
• Clemens Winkler born 1838: discovered germanium (Ge, element 32); analysis of gases

• Gerardus Johannes Mulder born 1802: protein analysis; physiological chemistry (including chemistry of wine).
• Louis Pasteur born 1822: research in molecular dissymmetry (optical activity of tartaric acids), fermentation, decomposition, microbes, and anti-microbial treatment of beverages (pasteurization)

• Ernest Eliel born 1921: organic stereochemistry and conformational analysis
• Karl Remigius Fresenius born 1818: qualitative and quantitative analytical chemistry
• Kary Mullis born 1944: developed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for making copies of DNA; Nobel Prize, 1993
• Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery of new rays, 1895, inspiring research that would lead to a thousand papers on X-rays within a year.
• Lewis Hastings Sarett synthesized cortisone at Merck, Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, 1944.

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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