October in the Periodic Table

A month by month list of birthdays and anniversaries from This Week in the History of Chemistry associated with the periodic table or with elements prepared for the International Year of the Periodic Table (2019). These record contain links to a searchable map, Places of the Periodic Table. Map links include the text "[map];" to see information associated with the location, click on the icon at the center of the map or search for the person or event mentioned here.

October 1

Otto Frisch born 1904: interpretation of nuclear fission [map] with Lise Meitner [map].

October 2

William Ramsay [map] born 1852: co-discoverer of neon (Ne, element 10), argon (Ar, 18), krypton (Kr, 36), and xenon (Xe, 54); isolated helium (He, 2); made a place for the noble gases in the periodic table; study of radium emanation (radon) and its production of helium; Nobel Prize, 1904. (Read a prediction of the discovery of neon or an account of the discovery of argon by his collaborator, Lord Rayleigh [map] or his Gases of the Atmosphere.)

October 5

Dirk Coster born 1889: co-discoverer of hafnium (Hf, element 72) [map]

October 6

Humphry Davy, working at the Royal Institution [map], isolated potassium, 1807.
William Remington of Boston received US patent 82,877 for electroplating of nickel [map], 1868.

October 7

Niels Bohr born 1885: quantized planetary model [map] of the atom; explanation of hydrogen atom spectrum; correspondence principle in quantum theory; Nobel prize (Physics), 1922. Bohrium (Bh, element 107) [map] is named for him.
Harold Walter Kroto born 1939: fullerenes [map]. (See paper in Nature.) Nobel Prize, 1996.

October 10

Henry Cavendish born 1731: discovered hydrogen (H, element 1) [map]; recognized water was not an element; investigated nitrogen-containing compounds and atmospheric nitrogen [map]. Read his Experiments on Air.

October 11

Fausto de Elhuyar born 1755: co-discoverer of tungsten (W, element 74) [map]
Harold Johnston born 1920: kinetics and photochemistry; atmospheric chemistry, particularly of ozone [map].

October 14

Alfred Nobel [map] received a Swedish patent for preparing nitroglycerine, in 1863. This has been reported (including here, previously!) as his first patent; it is not. See this partial list at the Nobel Foundation.
Jacobus van't Hoff [map] presented analogue of ideal gas law for the osmotic pressure of dilute solutions to Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1886

October 15

Evangelista Torricelli born 1608: vacuum, pressure, mercury barometer [map].

October 18

Christian Friedrich Schönbein born 1799: discovered ozone [map] and collodion; research on hydrogen peroxide and guncotton. Read more on the discovery and early history of ozone.

October 19

Marguerite Perey born 1909: discovered francium (Fr, element 87) [map].

October 21

John Dalton [map] read a paper containing his first list of atomic weights to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 1803.
Alfred Nobel born 1833: invented dynamite; established Nobel Prizes and Nobel Foundation. Nobelium (No, element 102) [map] is named after Nobel.

October 22

Frank Harold Spedding born 1902: reduction of rare earth elements to metallic state; uranium processing for fission [map]

October 24

Alonzo Dwight Phillips receives US patent 68 for friction matches (whose heads contained chalk, phosphorus [map], glue, and brimstone (sulfur) [map]), 1836.

October 27

Gustav Kirchhoff [map] announces invention of spectroscope, 1859.
Antoine Lavoisier [map] and wife Marie Paulze survive a munitions explosion, 1788.

October 29

Robert Bowie Owens [search for Owens] born 1870: thorium [map] radiation and thorium emanation, later called radon

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