DOCSLIB.ORG

The D Iscoverv and Early History of Catalysis

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The D Iscoverv and Early History of Catalysis “A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B. Hunt 12 The D iscoverv and Early History j j j of Catalysis “ / have tried to produce these phenomena with various metals hut I have succeeded only with platinum and palladium. ” HUMPHRY DAVY The point had now been reached when the more important physical properties of platinum and some of its associated metals had become reasonably well understood and had formed the basis of several applications. One major property, and one that was later to make a most significant contribution to chemical industry, was, however, yet to be discovered. As is so often the case, this discovery came incidentally from a quite different investigation. A disastrous explosion in a coal mine in the North of England in 1812, shortly followed by a number of similar explosions, prompted an appeal for advice to Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution and resulted in his well- known researches on flame and his invention of the miner’s safety lamp. In a paper read to the Royal Society on January 23rd 1817 Davy described his experiments on the increase in the limits of combustibility of mixtures of coal gas and air with increasing temperature: “For this purpose, I introduced a small wire-gauze safe-lamp with some fine wire of platinum fixed above the flame, into a combustible mixture containing the maximum of coal gas, and when the inflammation had taken place in the wire-gauze cylinder, I threw in more coal gas, expecting that the heat acquired by the mixed gas in passing through the wire-gauze would prevent the excess from extinguishing the flame. The flame continued for two or three seconds after the coal gas was introduced; and when it was extinguished, that part of the wire of platinum which had been hottest remained ignited, and continued so for many minutes. It was immediately obvious that this was the result which I had hoped to attain by other methods, and that the oxygen and coal gas in contact with the wire combined without flame, and yet produced heat enough to preserve the wire ignited, and to keep up their own combustion. I proved the truth of this conclusion by making a similar mixture, heating a fine wire of platinum and introducing it into the mixture. It immediately became ignited nearly to whiteness, as if it had been itself in actual com­ bustion, and continued glowing for a long while, and when it was extinguished, the inflammability of the mixture was found entirely destroyed. 219 © 1982 Johnson Matthey “A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B. Hunt The opening page of the manuscript of Sir Humphry Davy's paper read to the Koval Society on January 23rd. 1817. “Some new experiments and observations on the combination of gaseous mixtures, with an account of a method for keeping a continued light in mixtures of inflammable gases and air without flame". The paper goes on: **I had intended to expose fine platinum wires to oxygen and olefiant gas and to oxygen and hydrogen during their slow combination under different circumstances. when I was accidentally led to the discovery of a new and curious series of phenomena.** Davy had discovered heterogeneous catalytic oxidation but unfortunately he did not appreciate the significance of his fi n< lings By rourtes* of the Koval Institution I have tried to produce these phenomena with various metals; but I have succeeded only with platinum and palladium; with copper, silver, iron, gold and zinc, the effect is not produced. ” (1) Thus Davy discovered the phenomenon of heterogeneous catalytic oxidation and although he obtained the same results with ether and alcohol, obtaining an acidic product that Faraday and later Daniell identified as a mixture of ace- taldehyde and acetic acid, he did not carry further the study of this profoundly important effect. His mind was fully occupied with problems of combustion, he was by now fully satisfied with the safety-lamp and he tended to regard the phenomenon he had discovered, as he wrote to one of his colliery manager friends, as “more like magic than anything I have seen ... it depends upon a perfectly new principle in combustion” (2 ). The Researches of Edmund Davy Despite this Davy’s paper aroused great interest; it was translated into German and French and it also encouraged his cousin Edmund Davy to take up the matter. Edmund, seven years younger than Humphry, had been engaged as the 220 © 1982 Johnson Matthey “A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B. Hunt Edmund Davy 1785-1857 A younger cousin of Humphry Davy. Edmund first assisted the latter at the Royal Institution and then held the chair of chemistrv at the Royal Cork Institution. Here he prepared finely divided platinum and found that it would oxidise alcohol vapour at room temperature, sufficient heat being generated to raise the metal to a white heat. Again. Edmund Davy failed to grasp the significance of his discovery, but it led immediately to the much more effective researches of Dobereiner From a portrait in the possession of ihe Ko\al Dublin Society latter’s assistant in 1804 and then in 1831 had secured an appointment as Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Cork Institution. While still at the Royal Institution in London he had made several studies in the chemistry of platinum and published long papers in The Philosophical Magazine (3). In 1817 he carried these researches further and presented a paper to the Royal Society on a new fulminating compound of platinum (4). He stood much in the shadow of Humphry, and when in 1820 he published a paper describing the preparation of finely divided platinum by reducing a solution of platinum sulphate with alcohol and its great activity at room temperature in the oxidation of a further quantity of alcohol, he merely wrote: “In this case the acid first noticed by Sir H. Davy (in his beautiful experiment of the ignited platinum wire, and since more fully examined by Mr. Daniell) is produced . This mode of igniting a metal seems to be quite a new fact in the history of chemistry, but the means of keeping it in a state of ignition is only another illustration of the facts previously pointed out by Sir H. Davy, in his late valuable researches.” (5) Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner Edmund Davy’s paper was reproduced in German in Schweigger’s Journal fiir Chemie in the spring of the following year and attracted the attention of Johann 221 © 1982 Johnson Matthey “A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B. Hunt Wolfgang Döbereiner who was to open up a much more vigorous study of the phenomenon and to cause quite a sensation among his scientific contemporaries. Döbereiner, born the son of a coachman in 1780, first served an apprenticeship to an apothecary and then spent five years as an apothecary’s assistant in Karlsruhe and Strasburg, attending lectures on chemistry and mineralogy in his free time. Opening his own pharmaceutical manufacturing business, he began to contribute papers to Gehlen’s Neues Allgemeine Journal für Chemie but his business failed and he was left impoverished. In 1810, to his great surprise, Döbereiner was appointed to the Professorship of Chemistry in the University of Jena, the chair created by Carl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1789 and now left vacant by the death of its first holder, Johann Göttling. The appointment was made by the Duke, an enlightened patron of the arts and sciences, together with his Minister of State Goethe on the recommendation of Gehlen, and Döbereiner remained for the rest of his life most grateful for this opportunity, refusing several offers of chairs in other universities. An extraordinary friendship grew between Döbereiner, the Grand Duke (as he became in 1815) and Goethe, both interested in chemistry. By the August of 1821 he had not only repeated Edmund Davy’s experiments but had fully appreciated their significance, rightly regarding the important discovery as the activity of the platinum rather than, as had both the Davys, as the action upon it of the alcohol. He believed at the time that Edmund Davy’s product was a sub-oxide of platinum and he wrote: “The platinum sub-oxide moreover, does not undergo any change during this transformation of the alcohol and can immediately be used again to acidify fresh, perhaps limitless, quantities of alcohol ... a circumstance that permits its use for the large scale preparation of acetic acid. ” (7) In July 1823 he turned his attention to the metal itself, and prepared platinum in powder form by heating ammonium chloroplatinate. This he found would ignite a mixture of hydrogen and either air or oxygen even at room temperature or below: “There now followed in a few moments that strange reaction; the volume of the gases diminished and after ten minutes all the oxygen in the admitted air had con­ densed with the hydrogen to water. ” (8) He also gave some thought to the most suitable form to adopt for the platinum powder and made use of small moulded pellets of potter’s clay impreg­ nated with platinum - the first example of a supported catalyst. Döbereiner was quick to make his findings known. Two days after this experiment - which he repeated “ at least thirty times that day and always with the same result” — he wrote to Goethe: “ Permit me, your Excellency, to give you news of a discovery that seems to be important in the highest degree from the points of view of both physics and electrochemistry.” (9) He also wrote similarly to Lorenz Oken, the editor of a scientific journal Isis, 222 © 1982 Johnson Matthey “A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Early History of Catalysis
    The Early History of Catalysis By Professor A. J. B. Robertson Department of Chemistry, King’s College, London One hundred and forty years ago it was Berzelius proceeded to propose the exist- possible for one man to prepare an annual ence of a new force which he called the report on the progress of the whole of “catalytic force” and he called “catalysis” the chemistry, and for many years this task was decomposition of bodies by this force. This undertaken by the noted Swedish chemist is probably the first recognition of catalysis J. J. Berzelius for the Stockholm Academy of as a wide-ranging natural phenomenon. Sciences. In his report submitted in 1835 and Metallic catalysts had in fact been used in published in 1836 Berzelius reviewed a num- the laboratory before 1800 by Joseph Priestley, ber of earlier findings on chemical change in the discoverer of oxygen, and by the Dutch both homogeneous and heterogeneous sys- chemist Martinus van Marum, both of whom tems, and showed that these findings could be made observations on the dehydrogenation of rationally co-ordinated by the introduction alcohol on metal catalysts. However, it seems of the concept of catalysis. In a short paper likely that these investigators regarded the summarising his ideas on catalysis as a new metal merely as a source of heat. In 1813, force, he wrote (I): Louis Jacques Thenard discovered that ammonia is decomposed into nitrogen and “It is, then, proved that several simple or compound bodies, soluble and insoluble, have hydrogen when passed over various red-hot the property of exercising on other bodies an metals, and ten years later, with Pierre action very different from chemical affinity.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Evolution of Catalysts Design and Synthesis
    3 1 Evolution of Catalysts Design and Synthesis: From Bulk Metal Catalysts to Fine Wires and Gauzes, and that to Nanoparticle Deposits, Metal Clusters, and Single Atoms Wey Yang Teoh 1,2 1University of Malaya, Centre for Separation Science and Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2The University of New South Wales, School of Chemical Engineering, Sydney 2052, Australia 1.1 The Cradle of Modern Heterogeneous Catalysts The modern discovery of heterogeneous catalysts stretches as far back as 1800 when Joseph Priestley and Martinus van Marum reported the dehydrogenation of alcohol over a heated metal catalyst, although not too much was thought about the role of the metal catalyst at that time except as a heating source. Then in 1813, Louis Jacques Thénard of École Polytechnique in Paris discovered the decomposi- tion of ammonia to nitrogen and hydrogen over “red-hot metals” and recognized that the phenomenon was due to some catalytic reaction [1, 2]. The concept was followed up by Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution of London who, in 1817, reported the flameless catalytic combustion of coal gas and air over heated platinum wire producing bright white ignition. Their results were reproducible when using palladium, but not on copper, silver, iron, gold, and zinc [1, 3]. These experiments made clear that there was some form of cat- alytic role associated with the different metals. The discovery soon became the basisfortheinventionofthecoalminesafetylamp,alsoknownastheDavy lamp – although mysteriously but rather practically, the use of inefficient steel iron rather than platinum gauze became the standard for Davy lamps.
    [Show full text]
  • Liebig Buys Platinum from Janety the Younger U by W
    Liebig Buys Platinum from Janety the Younger U By W. H. Brock Department of Astronomy and History of Science, University of Leicester In his standard work A History of Platinum, melt as a platinum-arsenic eutectic at an Donald McDonald has described the improve- attainable temperature of 597°C. By skilful ments made to the arsenic process for the control of the temperature, the unwanted purification and conferment of malleability arsenic was volatilised as arsenious oxidc, on platinum by Marc Etienne Janety, or leaving behind a pure button of malleable Jeanety (c.1750--1820) (I). The Swedish metal- platinum. lurgist Heinrich Scheffer had shown in 1751 Janety, a French royal goldsmith, is that heated platinum melts in the presence of probably best known for his preparation of arsenic. By the 1780s the preparation of an the metric standards of weight and length arsenic-platinum mixture had been developed in 1795; however, more important for the into a commercial process for working development of practical and quantitative platinum by French goldsmiths and jewellers. chemistry was the way in which the tech- In their arsenic process, the iron impurities niques he developed enabled his firm to present in South American native platinum supply the growing demand from European were oxidised with “white arsenic” (arsenious chemists for platinum crucibles and other acid), which also induced the platinum to apparatus. The chemist and encyclopaedist Justus von Liebig 1803 - 1873 The centenary of his death recalls the great part played by Liebig when, as Professor at Giessen, he established one of thefLrst laboratories in Europe devoted to experimental instruction in chemistry - a laboratory later to become famous as “a factory for the production of professors”.
    [Show full text]
  • The First Organometallic Compounds WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER ZEISE and HIS PLATINUM COMPLEXES by L
    The First Organometallic Compounds WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER ZEISE AND HIS PLATINUM COMPLEXES By L. B. Hunt The Johnson Matthey Group The great interest being taken in the organometallic compounds 0.f thr platinum metals is evident in the current literature, in the .first Inter- national Conference on the Chemistry of the Platinum Group Metals held in Bristol in 1981, and now by the second conference to take placp in Edinburgh in July. This article reviews the preparation o,f the .first such compounds over a hundred and ,ffty years ago and thr acrimonious debate that ensued over their true constitution, continuing with a brief account of the early development o,f a ,further rangr o,f platinum complexes that have come to play an important part in industrial chemistry. During the last thirty years there has the son of the local pharmacist. After leaving developed a concentration of interest upon the school Zeise was himself apprenticed for a time preparation, structure and properties of a wide to Gottfried Becker, Royal Court pharmacist in range of organometallic compounds of the Copenhagen who combined this activity with platinum group of metals, much of this directed lecturing on chemistry at the university there, towards their usefulness in the catalytic syn- but poor health shortly caused him to return to thesis of a number of commercially valuable the family business in Slagelse. Here he con- chemical products. The most familiar industrial tinued to study chemistry and to absorb the examples of this type of reaction include, of new concepts put forward by Lavoisier, while in course, the carbonylation of methanol to acetic 1806 he was able to return to Copenhagen acid, the conversion of ethylene to acetaldehyde where he was taken into the family of Hans and the hydroformylation of olefins to Christian Oersted (1777-185 I) who had aldehydes, while other such large scale applica- recently been appointed extraordinary professor tions will undoubtedly be developed in the near of physics and chemistry in the university.
    [Show full text]
  • Edmund Davy Jaime Wisniak1
    Edmund Davy Jaime Wisniak1 Recepción: 2020-02-10. Aceptación: 2020-05-12. Reflexiones Abstract Keywords Edmund Davy (1785-1857) was a British scientist to whom we owe the discovery of acetylene (by accident), potassium carbide, the platinum sponge, the synthesis of a variety acetylene, arsenic, platinum of new platinum compounds, and an electrochemical procedure for determining small and derivatives, potassium amounts of platinum. He carried an extensive research on platinum and its derivatives; in carbide. particular, he studied the reaction of platinum with hydrogen sulfide, oxygen, chlorine, and phosphine, the preparation and properties of simple salts of platinum such as platinum sulfate, and the triple salts of platinum with potassium, sodium, ammonium, aluminum, and barium. Davy also studied the preparation and properties of the fulminates of platinum and silver, and developed a new electrochemical analytical procedure for detecting the presence of arsenic(II) and arsenic(III) oxides. Resumen Palabras clave Edmund Davy (1785-1857), un científico inglés a quien le debemos el descubrimiento acetileno, arsénico, carburo de del acetileno (por accidente), el carburo de potasio, la esponja de platino, la síntesis de potasio, platino y derivados. nuevos compuestos del platino, y un método electroquímico para detectar cantidades mínimas de arsénico. Estudio extensamente el platino y sus derivados, en particular, su reacción con el ácido sulfhídrico, oxígeno, cloro y la fosfina, la preparación y propiedades de sales simples como el sulfato de platino, y las sales triples del platino con potasio, sodio, amoníaco, aluminio y bario. Davy también estudió la preparación y propiedades de los fulminatos de platino y plata y desarrolló un nuevo proceso de análisis electroquímico para detectar la presencia de los óxidos de arsénico(II) y arsénico(III).
    [Show full text]
  • Davy and Alkalies
    Redis co very of the Elements Sir Humph ry Davy and the Alkalis I I I James L. Marshall, Beta Eta 1971 , and Virginia R. Marshall, Beta Eta 2003 , Department of Chemistry, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203-5070, [email protected] In a previous HEXAGON article on Joseph Black, 1h the three alkalis known in the 1700s were listed: “vegetable alkali” (potash), “mineral alkali” (soda), and “volatile alkali” (ammonia). 1h Figure 1. Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle St. (N51° 30.58 W00° 08.55), was founded in 1799 and has not All were known to react vigorously with acids changed its location since. The Institution was founded by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford and “to change the color of syrup of violets to (1753 –1814), an American born British scientist who through observing the boring of cannons realized green.” Ammonia was apparently a compound heat was created by friction. 10,11a of nitrogen and hydrogen ,2d as shown by His colorful history included his 1804 Claude Louis Berthollet (174 8–1822) at his marriage to Marie-Anne Lavoisier, the famous laboratory at Arcueil. 1c It was natural, widow of the famous Antoine Lavoisier. 11a therefore, that Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743 –1794) himself, the “father of modern Figure 2. Royal Institution, appearance in chemistry,” 1b who first recognized the true ele - 1838 (painting by Thomas H. Shepherd, ments and listed 31 that are now found in the 179 3–1864). At this time Michael Periodic Table, 3 would exclude the “fixed alka - Faraday was prominent among its scien - lis” —potash and sod a—from his list, 3 because tists, having succeeded Humphry Davy, they might be compounds of nitrogen as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Constructing Humphry Davy's Biographical Image Frank A.J.L
    1 Constructing Humphry Davy’s Biographical Image Frank A.J.L. James The Royal Institution and University College London, England http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0499-9291 This paper, which is also a contribution to the somewhat understudied area of the history of biography, discusses a couple of short accounts of Humphry Davy’s life and the three major biographies published in the years following his death. These were an “anti-biography” by John Ayrton Paris (1831) and two admiring biographies by Davy’s younger brother John Davy (1836, 1858). By examining the processes surrounding their writing and publication, this study illustrates how Davy’s biographical reputation was constructed, how his surviving manuscripts and related documents came to be collected and preserved and so help us understand the effects they continue to exert on Davy scholarship. Introduction The career trajectory of Humphry Davy (1778-1829) from provincial obscurity to international fame is well known. He moved from serving as an apprentice apothecary in the far west of England to working at the Medical Pneumatic Institution in Bristol where he discovered the astonishing physiological properties of nitrous oxide, to becoming the leading metropolitan scientific figure during the opening decades of the nineteenth century, first as a chemistry professor at the Royal Institution and later as a Secretary and, finally, President of the Royal Society of London. Our very familiarity with this biographical story seems to prevent us from perceiving the extraordinary nature of his
    [Show full text]
  • The Platinum Metals in Early Nineteenth Century Chemistry
    “A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B. Hunt 14 The Platinum Metals in Early Nineteenth Century Chemistry “Only one who himself has worked with the chemistry of the platinum metals can fully understand and evaluate the difficulties Berzelius had to overcome. He not only deter­ mined the atomic weights of platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium and osmium but also investigated a large number of the most important compounds of these metals. ” HENRIK GUSTAVSODERBAUM The first quarter of the nineteenth century saw the transformation of chemistry into an exact science. Following the great contributions of Lavoisier, his appreciation of the role of oxygen, his use of the balance and his introduction of the new nomenclature, a second major advance was made with the establish­ ment of the quantitative basis of chemical combination. It is possible here only to summarise very briefly the development of this numerical approach and to set the scene for the great change brought about in inorganic chemistry and its impact on the study of the platinum metals. This began with the rather obscure and somewhat neglected writings of Jeremias Benjamin Richter (1762—1807), the originator of the term “stoichiometry” and of the concept of equivalent weights of bases and acids. Richter studied under the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant at Königsberg and his choice of subject for his doctoral thesis, “The Use of Mathematics in Chemistry”, was most probably inspired by Kant. His book, published in 1792, was prefaced with a quotation in Greek from the Apocrypha: “Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight.” (1) In 1799 Joseph Louis Proust, whose work on platinum in the Royal Laboratory in Madrid has been described in Chapter 6, put forward his Law of Constant Composition, a concept that he later summarised in the phrase: 253 © 1982 Johnson Matthey “A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B.
    [Show full text]
  • The Only Brother of Sir Humphry
    1 New Light on John Davy Andrew Lacey Lancaster University, England John Davy (1790–1868), the only brother of Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), was an army doctor, serving overseas, in various posts, in Belgium, France, Ceylon, the Ionian Islands, Malta, and the West Indies. He was also a researcher, a writer in his own right, and the editor of his brother’s works. This article, drawing principally on three unpublished manuscript sources recovered during work on the Davy Letters Project, examines a crucial, formative period in John Davy’s life – the years 1808– 1814 – and situates him in the cultures and networks, scientific and literary, of which he was part. It explores John Davy’s time working as an assistant at the Royal Institution (1808–1811), a period he spent in Edinburgh as a student (1811–1813), and his engagement there in a scientific dispute with John Murray (1778–1820) over the chemical composition of muriatic acid gas, and the time he spent in his native Cornwall in 1814, prior to his first medical posting with the military. Introduction The publication of The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy ,1 which has been long in preparation, will represent a landmark in Davy studies: in presenting texts, with full annotation, of many previously unpublished letters written by Davy, the edition will provide new insights into Davy himself, the Davy circle, and the various, often interrelated cultures and networks – scientific, literary, and others – of which he was part. As the title suggests, the primary focus of this article is John Davy, Humphry Davy’s younger brother.
    [Show full text]
  • % the Papers Philosophical Transactions
    ABSTRACTS % OF THE PAPERS PRINTED IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF TH E ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, From, 1830 to 1837 inclusive. VOL. III. 1830 to 1837. PRINTED, BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT AND COUNCIL, From the Journal Book of the Society. LONDON: PRINTED BY RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYLOR, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET. M DCCCXXXVII. 1 « CONTENTS. VOL. III. 1830. On the Nature of Negative and Imaginary Quantities. By Davies Gil­ bert, Esq. President of the Royal Society............ ...................... ^ page 4 On a simple Electro-chemical Method of ascertaining the presence of different Metals; applied to detect minute quantities of Metallic Poisons. By Edmund Davy, Esq. F.R.S. M.R.I.A. and Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Dublin Society..................... .......... 5 On the performance of Fluid Refracting Telescopes, and on the appli­ cability of this principle of construction to very large instruments. By Peter Barlow, Esq. F.R.S. Corresponding Member of the Insti­ tute of France, of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, &c....... 13 Researches in Physical Astronomy. By John William Lubbock, Esq. V.P. and Treasurer of the Royal Society .............................. ......... 16 On the Hour Lines of the Ancients. By W. A. Cadell, Esq. F.R.S. 18 1831. On the Equilibrium of Fluids ; and the Figure of a Homogeneous Planet in a fluid state. By James Ivory, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. ...... 20 On the probable Electric Origin of all the Phenomena of Terrestrial Magnetism; with an illustrative experiment. By Peter Barlow, Esq. F.R.S. Corr. Mem. Inst. France and of the Imp, Acad.
    [Show full text]
  • Biographies Found in the Journal of Chemical Education (Compiled from the JCE Database Search Engine Using Keyword “Biography”) ©Dr
    1 Biographies found in the Journal of Chemical Education (compiled from the JCE database search engine using keyword “biography”) ©Dr. John Andraos, June 2003 1. The Curie-Becquerel story. Walton, Harold F. 1992, 69, 11 2. Personal recollections of Frank C. Whitmore. Hurd, Charles D. 1992, 69, 439 3. Personal recollections of Frank C. Whitmore by Charles D. Hurd. Traynham, James G., editor. 1992, 69, 439 4. Isidor Fankuchen alias Isadore van Kueken (LTE). Bryan, R. F. 1992, 69, 775 5. Isidor Fankuchen and crystallography (LTE). Rudman, Reuben. 1992, 69, 775 6. Carl S. Marvel at Illinois Wesleyan, 1911-1915. Tarbell, D. Stanley; Tarbell, Ann T. 1991, 68, 539 7. The brief career of a prolific, pioneering physical organic chemist, Elliot Ritchie Alexander, Jr. (LTE). Pinkus, A. G. 1991, 68, 711 8. Isaac Newton, the alchemist. Davies, Mansel. 1991, 68, 726 9. Carl Auer von Welsbach and the development of incandescent gas lighting. Stock, John T. 1991, 68, 801 10. Hofmann's Benzene tree at the Kekule festivities. Brock, William H.; Benfey, O. Theodor; Stark, Susanne. 1991, 68, 887 11. William Francis Giauque: An adventure in low-temperature research. Stranges, Anthony N. 1990, 67, 187 12. Nobel laureates in chemistry: A philatelic survey: Part I. 1901-1910 (STAMP). Kauffman, George B. 1990, 67, 451 13. The Liebig/Wohler satire on fermentation. de Mayo, Paul; Stoessi, Albert; Usselman, Melvyn C. 1990, 67, 552 14. Nobel laureates in chemistry: A philatelic survey: Part II. 1911-1934 (STAMP). Kauffman, George B. 1990, 67, 569 15. Elliot Quincy Adams (1888-1971): From dipolar ions to fluorescent lights.
    [Show full text]
  • The Collateral Sciences in the Work of Golding Bird (1814-1854)
    THE COLLATERAL SCIENCES IN THE WORK OF GOLDING BIRD (1814-1854) by N. G. COLEY THE IMPORTANCE of physics and chemistry-the collateral sciences-as an adjunct to the study of medicine, was well understood by many nineteenth-century physicians. It seemed that the most promising means of achieving a more scientific approach to the diagnosis and treatment of disease lay in the application of physical and chemical principles to the study of animal tissues and functions. The collateral sciences clearly had a fundamental part to play in the professional training of the medical student. The principal medical schools, such as that at Guy's Hospital for example, offered regular instruction in physics and chemistry, although the lectures were not always accompanied by experimental work. Alexander Marcet (1770-1822), was a physician at Guy's where he also lectured on chemistry and was perhaps best known for his chemical studies of urinary calculi. He placed special emphasis on analysis and attempted to correlate the chemical compositions of the calculi with diagnosis of the pathological conditions leading to their formation.' At the same time he set out to provide the medical practitioner with a convenient method of analysing minute quantities ofcalculi at the bedside of the patient. William Prout (1785-1850), was also well known at Guy's, though he held no official appointment there. His wider studies of the animal functions of digestion, assimilation and excretion, as well as the inter-relations between them, became classics of chemical physiology in their own times.2 These physicians, together with others such as Saunders, Babington and William Allen, established a strong tradition for the study of physiological chemistry at the hospital.
    [Show full text]