HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY / FAMOUS CHEMISTS

By Mary Bagley, Live Science Contributor

In many ways, the history of civilization is the history of chemistry — the study of matter
and its properties. Humans have always sought to identify, use and change the materials
in our environment. Early potters found beautiful glazes to decorate and preserve their
wares. Herdsmen, brewers and vintners used fermentation techniques to make cheese,
beer and wine. Housewives leached the lye from wood ash to make soap. Smiths learned
to combine copper and tin to make bronze. Crafters learned to make glass;
leatherworkers tanned hides.
In the eighth century A.D., Jābir ibn Hayyān, a Muslim astronomer, philosopher and
scientist, became one of the first to use scientific methods to study materials. Also
known by his Latinized name, Geber, he is known as the "father of chemistry." He is
thought to be the author of 22 scrolls describing methods of distillation, crystallization,
sublimation and evaporation. He invented the alembic, a device used to distill and study
acids. He also developed an early chemical classification system using the properties of
the materials he studied. His categories were:

 “Spirits” — materials that would vaporize when heated.

 "Metals" — including iron, tin, copper, and lead.
 Non-malleable substances — materials that could be made into powders, such as
stone.

Today we might call similar materials “volatile chemicals, metals and non-metals.”

Classical chemistry

In Europe, the study of chemistry was conducted by alchemists with the goals of
transforming common metals into gold or silver and inventing a chemical elixir that
would prolong life. Although these goals were never achieved, there were some
important discoveries made in the attempt.
Robert Boyle(1627-1691) studied the behavior of gases and discovered the inverse
relationship between volume and pressure of a gas. He also stated that “all reality and
change can be described in terms of elementary particles and their motion,” an early
understanding of atomic theory. In 1661, he wrote the first chemistry textbook, “The
Sceptical Cymist,” which moved the study of substances away from mystical associations
with alchemy and toward scientific investigation.
y the 1700s, the Age of Enlightenment had taken root all over Europe. Joseph
Priestley (1733-1804) disproved the idea that air was an indivisible element. He showed
that it was, instead, a combination of gases when he isolated oxygen and went on to
discover seven other discreet gases. Jacques Charlescontinued Boyles’ work and is
known for stating the direct relationship between temperature and pressure of gases.
In 1794, Joseph Proust studied pure chemical compounds and stated the Law of Definite
Proportions — a chemical compound will always have its own characteristic ratio of
elemental components. Water, for instance, always has a two-to-one ratio of hydrogen
to oxygen. Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) was a French chemist who made important
contributions to the science. While working as a tax collector, Lavoisier helped to
develop the metric system in order to insure uniform weights and measures. He was
admitted to the French Academy of Sciences in 1768. Two years later, at age 28, he
married the 13-year-old daughter of a colleague. Marie-Anne Lavoisier is known to have
assisted her husband in his scientific studies by translating English papers and doing
numerous drawings to illustrate his experiments. Lavoisier’s insistence on meticulous
measurement led to his discovery of the Law of Conservation of Mass. In 1787, Lavoisier
published "Methods of Chemical Nomenclature," which included the rules for naming
chemical compounds that are still in use today. His "Elementary Treatise of Chemistry"
(1789) was the first modern chemistry textbook. It clearly defined a chemical element
as a substance that cannot be reduced in weight by a chemical reaction and
listed oxygen, iron, carbon, sulfur and nearly 30 other elements then known to exist.
The book did have a few errors though; it listed light and heat as elements. Amedeo
Avogadro (1776-1856) was an Italian lawyer who began to study science and
mathematics in 1800. Expanding on the work of Boyle and Charles, he clarified the
difference between atoms and molecules. He went on to state that equal volumes of
gas at the same temperature and pressure have the same number of molecules. The
number of molecules in a 1-gram molecular weight (1 mole) sample of a pure substance
is called Avogadro’s Constant in his honor. It has been experimentally determined to be
6.023 x 1023 molecules and is an important conversion factor used to determine the
mass of reactants and products in chemical reactions.
In 1803, an English meteorologist began to speculate on the phenomenon of water
vapor. John Dalton (1766-1844) was aware that water vapor is part of the atmosphere,
but experiments showed that water vapor would not form in certain other gases. He
speculated that this had something to do with the number of particles present in those
gases. Perhaps there was no room in those gases for particles of water vapor to
penetrate. There were either more particles in the “heavier” gases or those particles
were larger. Using his own data and the Law of Definite Proportions, he determined the
relative masses of particles for six of the known elements: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,
carbon, sulfur and phosphorous.
Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907) was a Russian chemist known for developing the
first Periodic Table of the Elements. He listed the 63 known elements and their
properties on cards. When he arranged the elements in order of increasing atomic mass,
he could group elements with similar properties. With a few exceptions, every seventh
element had similar properties (The eighth chemical group — the Noble Gases — had
not been discovered yet). Mendeleev realized that if he left spaces for the places where
no known element fit into the pattern that it was even more exact. Using the blank
spaces in his table, he was able to predict the properties of elements that had yet to be
discovered. Mendeleev’s original table has been updated to include the 92 naturally
occurring elements and 26 synthesized elements.