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See also This Month in the History of the Periodic Table (with links to a searchable online map).

July 21-August 3

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

• William de Wiveleslie Abney born 1843: color photography and its chemistry.
• Alice Augusta Ball born 1892: one of the first African American women to earn an advanced degree in chemistry and to publish in JACS, Ball developed an injectable treatment for leprosy based on esterifying chaulmoogra oil in 1915. Ball died very young, in 1916.

• Frances Arnold born 1956: directed evolution of enzymes; Nobel Prize, 2018
• Colgate-Palmolive incorporated 1923
• Rosalind Franklin born 1920: X-ray crystallography of DNA, including her famous "photograph 51"; view Franklin typescript on structure of sodium thymonucleate.
• John B. Goodenough born 1922: lithium ion batteries; Nobel Prize, 2019
• Andreas Libavius died 1616 (birth date unknown in 1540): author of Alchemia (or Alchymia) (perhaps first chemical textbook), fuming liquor of Libavius, ammonium sulfate, chemical analysis.

• Isaac Babbitt born 1799: invented Babbitt metal for bearings (an alloy of tin, antimony, and copper). No relation to Sinclair Lewis's George Babbitt
• A marriage of minds: Pierre Curie and Marja Sklodowska wed, 1895.
• James Lovelock born 1919: invented electron capture detector (US patent 3046396); first detected chlorofluorocarbons in atmosphere; best known for Gaia hypothesis
• Paul Walden born 1863: electrical conductivity and electrolytic dissociation; Walden inversion.

• Bertram Borden Boltwood born 1870: early radioactivity and radiochemistry research.
• Friedrich Dorn born 1848: discovered radon (Rn, element 86), an "emanation of radium" in 1900. (Note that Ernest Rutherford discovered an "emanation of thorium" (later recognized as an isotope of radon) in the same year.)
• Hans Fischer born 1881: research on hemin, chlorophyll, porphyrins, and related compounds; Nobel prize, 1930

• James Curtis Booth born 1810: methods for refining gold-silver bullion at US Mint, Philadelphia.

• Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat born 1910: separated viral RNA from protein and showed that RNA was the active agent, turning attention to the role of nucleic acids in heredity.
• Isidor Isaac Rabi born 1898: atomic and molecular beam spectroscopy; nuclear magnetic properties; Nobel Prize (Physics), 1944
• Walter Julius Reppe born 1892: industrial organic chemistry (at BASF); high-pressure reactions of acetylene.

• The "Charles" of Antwerp, Belgium, becomes the "first oil tanker", 1869, carrying oil from the U.S. to Europe in iron tanks below decks.

• August Beer born 1825: Beer-Lambert law relating absorption of light to concentration of absorbing material
• Paul Delos Boyer born 1918: enzymatic mechanism of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthesis; Nobel Prize, 1997.
• The first US patent was in industrial chemistry, issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins on a process for making potash and pearl ashes (signed by President Washington). [Link to US Patent and Trademark Office.]
• Stephanie Kwolek born 1923: invented Kevlar® (US patent 3,819,587); Perkin medal 1997.
• Primo Levi born 1919: chemically-trained memoirist; Survival in Auschwitz and The Periodic Table; died by suicide (?) in 1987
• Sofia Simmonds born 1917: amino acid metabolism of bacteria; Garvan Medal, 1969.
• Friedrich Wöhler born 1800: synthesis of organic compounds from inorganic materials (oxalic acid and urea); isolated aluminum (Al, element 13) and beryllium (Be, 4); preparation of acetylene (ethyne) from calcium carbide

• Joseph Henry Gilbert born 1817: nitrogen fertilizers
• Charles Robert Harington born 1897: biochemist; synthesized thyroxine with G. Barger
• George de Hevesy born 1885: radioisotopes; co-discoverer of hafnium (Hf, element 72); Nobel prize, 1943.
• Richard Kirwan born 1733: specific heats; defender of phlogiston eventually converted to antiphlogistic theories.
• Joseph Priestley first prepared oxygen, 1774.

• Albert Einstein sent letter about military implications of atomic energy to President Franklin Roosevelt, 1939.
• Leopold Gmelin born 1788: Gmelin's salt (potassium ferricyanide); test for bile pigments; History of science and chemistry [auf Deutsch]; Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie and its successor database. The 1843 edition of the handbook contains remarkable V-shaped table of elements.
• Benjamin Rush, professor of chemistry at College of Philadelphia, signed US Declaration of Independence, 1776.
• Friedrich Stromeyer born 1776: discoverer of cadmium (Cd, element 48); analysis of minerals.

• John Wilfred Linnett born 1913: molecular structure; combustion and flame kinetics.
• Koichi Tanaka born 1959: mass spectrometric analysis of biological macromolecules; Nobel prize 2002.
• George Whitesides born 1939: use of enzymes in organic synthesis; combination of chemistry, biology, biochemistry and material science.
• Alexander Williamson reads paper on synthesis of ethers to British Association, 1850.

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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