Wilhelm Ostwald

Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald was born on September 2, 1853 in Riga, Latvia.  His father, Gottfried, was a master cooper and he was the middle of three brothers. His family was German in origin, but he attended a local kronsschule with Latvian and Russian children and he attended the local real gymnasium school. He matriculated to the University of Tartu in 1872 and after briefly enjoying fraternity life the influence of his father convinced him to take his academics seriously. He started working in the laboratory of Karl Schmidt. From Schmidt's assistant Johan Lemburg he learned the essentials of inorganic analysis and he earned his bachelor's degree in 1875 and his doctorate in 1978 working in Schmidt's lab.

In 1887 he served as an unpaid lecturer at the University of Tartu. Four years later he became a professor of chemistry at Riga Polytechnic University and six years after that be became professor of physical chemistry at Lepzig University. Ostwald remained at Lepzig until his retirement in 1906, except for one year as the first exchange professor at Harvard University in 1904-5. Ostward's lab became a center for instruction in physical chemistry and among his students were many Nobel Prize winners including Arrhenius, Van 't Hoff and Nernst. Albert Einstein applied to work in Ostwald's lab.

Ostwald began his research in 1875 studying the law of mass action of water with the problem of chemical affinity and with special emphasis on electrochemistry. This led to the discovery of the law of dilution, which is named after him and governs the disassociation of a weak acid or base. Ostwald became one of the founders of modern physical chemistry and wrote several textbooks on the subject. Ostwald founded Zeitschrift fur physikalsche Chemie in 1887 and remained its editor until 1922 editing over 100 volumes. He is the inventor of the Ostwald process for producing nitric acid, which he patented in 1902. His development of the mole concept (a mole of a chemical being equal to its atomic mass in grams) was ironically part of his resistance to atomic theory, against which he was one of the last holdouts.

Ostwald won the 1909 Nobel Prize "in recognition for his investigations into the fundamental principals governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction". Besides chemistry Ostwald had many insterests including philosophy and painting, for which he produced his own pigments. Later in his career he wrote several books dealing with color theory.

Ostwald died on April 4, 1932.


References:

Kim, Mi Gyung; "Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932)"; 2006; at hyle.org

May, Leopold; "Wilhelm Ostwald"; 2003; at faculty.cua.edu

Wilhelm Ostwald Nobel Biography

Wilhelm Ostwald Wikipedia Entry

Svante August Arrhenius

Svante August Arrhenius was born on February 19, 1859 in Vik, a village near Uppsala, Sweden. His father, Svante Gustaf Arrhenius, was a land surveyor who worked for the University of Uppsala. The family moved to Uppsala in 1860. A gifted child, Arrhenius learned to read from lessons given by his older brother Janne. He learned to do arithmetic by watching his father keeping the accounts that he was responsible for. At age 8 he entered the local cathedral school, starting in 5th grade. He excelled at mathematics and physics, graduating as the youngest and most able student in 1876. In the autumn of 1876 Arrhenius entered the University of Uppsala, where he studied mathematics, physics and chemistry. He finished his bachelors in January 1878, finishing in a year and a half, a record at the time.

After a trip to Paris, he began his graduate studies in physics at the University of Uppsala, but due to the poor instruction he moved to Stockholm, studying under Erik Edland at the Physical Institute of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Arrhenius began working for Edland studying electrical spark discharges, but moved on to studying the dissolution of electrolytes in water. Electrolytes are chemicals that when added to water make a solution that conducts electricity. Arrhenius discovered that electrolytes, when dissolved in water, break up into negatively and positively charged particles called ions. His thesis was not well received by his professors and was given the lowest possible passing grade.  Only after his defense was it raised to a third class rating.

 Arrhenius sent his thesis to two of the leading physical chemists of the time, Jacobus van't Hoff and Wilhelm Ostwald. Ostwald was so impressed that after some correspondence he traveled to Uppsala to offer Arrhenius a docent position in Riga, which at that time was part of the Russian Empire. Arrhenius decided to stay in Sweden and he was given an unpaid docent position at the University of Uppsala, the first such position in the emerging science of physical chemistry. In 1885, with the recommendation of Edland he received a traveling fellowship from the Swedish Academy of Science that allowed him to travel through Europe and work with prominent physical chemists. In 1886 he traveled to Riga to work with Ostwald and to Wurzburg to work with Friedrich Kohlrausch. In 1887 he traveled to Graz to work with Ludwig Boltzmann and in 1888 he traveled to Amsterdam to work with van't Hoff. During these trips he studied the effects of ions in solution, including the increase in the boiling point and lower the freezing point of ionic solutions versus pure solvents and the effects of ions in digestion and in the interaction of toxins and anti-toxins.

It was not until 1891, after he refused the offer of a professorship in Giessen, Germany, that he was made lecturer at Stockholm University College and in 1895 he was appointed professor of physics. In 1886 after studying the causes of ice ages he published a paper linking atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures. He calculated that if the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled the temperature would rise by 5^o-6^oC. Scientists today say that it is really only a 2^o-3^oC rise in temperature. This rise in temperature is caused by the infrared absorption of carbon dioxide. The sun's rays warm the earth and it cools by releasing infrared radiation. This radiation is absorbed by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and reflected back to earth, preventing it from escaping back into space. This is called the greenhouse effect, where carbon dioxide in the atmosphere keeps the earth warm by preventing heat from escaping. The cumulative effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses give rise to global warming.

Around 1900 Arrhenius became involved with the Nobel Prize. In 1897, with the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish scientific establishment was left with the task of organizing the bequest from his will, prizes awarded to outstanding achievements in chemistry, medicine, physics, economics, literature, and peace that benefit mankind. Arrhenius was largely responsible for setting up the rules that govern the prizes. In 1903 he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on the "electrolyte theory of dissociation". This was partly work he had done on his doctoral dissertation that only earned third class honors. Other honors he won include election as a foreign member to the Royal Society of England in 1911, the Society's Davy Medal and the Faraday Medal given by the Chemical Society, as well as many honorary doctorates.

Arrenius spent his later years writing  scientific textbooks and science books for a lay audience and he died on October 2, 1927 in Stockholm. He was buried in Uppsala.


References:

Arrhenius, Gustav; Caldwell, Karen; and Wold, Svante; "A tribute to the memory of Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927)"; The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineers (2008)

Sample, Ian; "The Father of Climate Change"; The Guardian; June 30, 2005

Svante Arrhenius Wikipedia Entry

Svante Arrhenius Nobel Biography

Theodore William Richards

Theodore William Richards was born in Germantown in Philadelphia, PA on January 31, 1868. He was the fifth child and third son of father William Trost Richards who was a famous landscape painter and mother Anna Matlack who was a poet. Because of the poor quality of schools in Philadelphia at the time and the family's frequent travels, Richards got his elementary education from his mother. The boy's early desire to become a painter like his father had faded by the time that he was thirteen.

At thirteen he received a large box containing materials and apparatus for 200 experiments "warranted to be safe and instructive". Richards recorded his progress, "Soon afterwards, ... I had nearly blown my head off with this outfit." Richards interest in chemistry was sparked and he obtained and read several basic chemistry textbooks to increase his knowledge and safety.

In 1883 he entered Haverford College in Pennsylvania. There he studied chemistry and astronomy graduating in 1885. From there he went to Harvard to study under Josiah Parsons Cooke, a family friend. There he finished his B.A. in chemistry in 1885 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in 1888, publishing a joint paper with professor Cooke on the atomic weights of hydrogen and oxygen and three other papers on his own.

After finishing his Ph.D. Richards spent a year at Gottengen, Germany where he worked under Paul Jannasch and Victor Meyer. Upon returning to Harvard Richards was appointed assistant in chemistry in 1889, instructor in chemistry in 1891, assistant professor in 1894 and professor in 1901, after passing up a professorship at the University of Gottengen. In 1895 he spent another year in Germany working with Wilhelm Ostwald and Walther Nernst. These two trips to Germany served as Richards introduction to physical chemistry. At the time there were no centers of physical chemistry research in the United States.

Half of Richards' research involved determining the atomic weights of the elements, starting with work on oxygen and copper in 1886. By 1912 he had accurately determined the atomic weight of thirty common elements. Richards also studied atomic and molecular volume and formulated the hypothesis of incompressible atoms, carrying out experiments on the compressibility of many elements and compounds using apparatus of his own invention. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1914 for his work on atomic weights, but was unable to travel to Sweden to accept it due to the outbreak of World War I. He also received the Davy Medal from the Royal Society in 1910, Willard Gibbs Medal from the American Chemical society in 1912, and the Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1916.

Richards continued his teaching and active research up until his death on April 2, 1928.


References:

Conant, James Bryan, "Theodore William Richards"; in Biographical Memoirs; National Academies Press; 1974

Harrow, Benjamin, "Theodore William Richards"; in Eminent Chemists of Our Time; D. Van Nostrand Company; 1920

Theodore William Richards Nobel biography at Nobelprize.org