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May be to someone will interestingly to learn about Great scientists-chemists. Let's place here their biography and their scientific works

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I`d like to tell about the Italian physicist and chemist Lorentso Romano Amedeo Karlo Avogadro.

On August, 9th, 1776 - on July, 9th, 1856

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The Italian physicist and chemist Lorentso Romano Amedeo Karlo Avogadro was born in Turin, in a family of the official of judicial department. In 1792 has ended faculty of law of the Turin university, in 1796 became the Doctor of Law. Already in youth Avogadro has become interested in natural sciences, independently studied physics and the mathematics.
In 1803 Avogadro has presented to the Turin academy the first scientific work on studying of properties of an electricity. Since 1806 taught physics in university lycée. In 1820 Avogadro became the professor of the Turin university; however in 1822 the chair of the higher physics has been closed and only in 1834 he could return to teaching activity at university in which was engaged till 1850 .

In 1804 Avogadro becomes a member-correspondent, and in 1819 - the ordinary academician of the Turin academy of sciences.
Scientific proceedings Avogadro are devoted various areas of physics and chemistry (an electricity, the electrochemical theory, specific heat, capillarity, nuclear volumes, the nomenclature of chemical compounds, etc.) .
In 1811 Avogadro has put forward a hypothesis, that in identical volumes of gases contains at identical temperatures and pressure equal number of molecules (law Avogadro). Hypothesis Avogadro has allowed to result in uniform system skilled data Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac contradicting each other (the law of connection of gases) and atomic theory John Dalton.
Consequence of hypothesis Avogadro was the assumption that molecules of simple gases can consist of two atoms. On the basis of hypothesis Avogadro has offered a way of definition of nuclear and molecular weights; according to other researchers he has correctly defined for the first time nuclear weights of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, chlorine and of some other elements. Avogadro the first has established exact quantitative nuclear structure of molecules of many substances (waters, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, ammonia, chlorine, nitric oxide).
Results of works Avogadro as founder of the molecular theory have been recognised only in 1860 on the International congress of chemists in Karlsruhe thanks to S.Kannitstsaro's efforts. By name of Avogadro the universal constant (Avogadro constant) - number of molecules in 1 mole of ideal gas is named.
Avogadro - the author of an original course of physics. This course is the first guide on the molecular physics which includes also physical chemistry elements.

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I read that molecular hypothesis Avogadro has not been accepted by the majority of physicists and chemists of 1st half XIX century.
The majority of chemists-contemporaries of the Italian scientist, distinctions between atom and a molecule could not understand distinctly. Even Berzelius, proceeding from the electrochemical theory, considered, that in equal volumes of gases the identical number of atoms contains.

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BEKETOV, Nikolay Nikolaevich

January, 13th, 1827 - December, 13th, 1911

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The Russian chemist Nikolay Nikolaevich Beketov, one of founders of physical chemistry, was born in village of the Penza province. Studied in 1st Petersburg grammar school; in 1844 has arrived in the Petersburg university, but from 3rd course has passed in the Kazan university which was ended in 1849 In 1849-1853. Beketov worked in St.-Petersburg in Mediсo-surgical academy in N.N.Zinina's chemical laboratory.
In 1854 Beketov has received degree of the master of chemistry, in 1855 is appointed by an aide-de-camp on chemistry chair in the Kharkov university in which in 1859 became the professor of chemistry. In Kharkov Beketov worked till 1886 when has been selected by the ordinary academician of the Petersburg academy of sciences. In 1886 Beketov has moved to Petersburg where worked in the academic chemical laboratory and taught on the Higher female courses. In 1890 gave at the Moscow university a course «the Basic beginnings of thermochemistry».
He was some times elected the President of Russian physical and chemical society.
In the beginning of scientific activity Beketov worked in to acquire organic chemistry. Together with Zinin he investigated behaviour of organic substances at heats. The arising physical chemistry became the main area of scientific activity of Beketov. In 1865 Beketov has put forward a number of theoretical positions about dependence of a direction of reactions on a condition of reagents and external conditions. He has opened displacement of metals from solutions of their salts hydrogen under pressure, has established, that magnesium and zinc at heats displacement other metals from their salts.
Beketov has created thermochemical laboratories in which together with pupils investigated chemical affinity. Beketov has defined warmth of formation oxides and chlorides of alkaline metals, for the first time has received (1870) waterless oxides alkaline metals.
In 1859-1865 he has shown, that at heats aluminium restores many metals from them oxides; later these experiences have served as a starting point for occurrence aluminothermy.
Beketov's huge services is physical chemistry development as independent scientific and a subject matter. In 1860 in Kharkov Beketov gave a course «the Relation of the physical and chemical phenomena among themselves», and in 1865 - a course "Physical chemistry".
In 1864 under Beketov's offer at the Kharkov university the physical and chemical branch is founded.
On which along with lecturing the practical work on physical chemistry has been entered and physical and chemical researches were carried out.

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Frederick Abel
(1827–1902)

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A distinguished chemist and explosives specialist, Abel is remembered as oneof the inventors of cordite, a smokeless gunpowder still used today. Born inWoolwich, near London, Abel studied under August Wilhelm von Hofmann (1818-1892), an enormously influential experimental and industrial scientist, at theRoyal College of Chemistry.
During a lengthy career he served as a researcher, scholar, and lecturer, and became the leading British authority on explosives. One of his most significant early discoveries was that guncotton could bechemically stabilized through thorough washing with water to remove all traces of acid and impurities.

His most important work, however, came after the British government's establishment in 1888 of an Explosives Commission, dedicated in particular to the military uses of new discoveries in the field.
As a member of this Commission,Abel kept in close contact with Alfred Nobel, an acquaintance from previous years whose latest invention, ballistite, was received with skepticism due tothe volatility of camphor as an ingredient.
In 1889 Abel, together with JamesDewar, invented cordite, a versatile smokeless powder which purportedly improved upon ballistite through the introduction of acetone and petroleum jelly.

Although Nobel contested the cordite patent, the English rights of which Abeland Dewar handed over to the government, his efforts were unsuccessful and widespread production of the propellant continued.
Abel was knighted in 1891 for his invention and was made a baronet two years later.

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Sidney Altman

7-May-1939

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Sidney Altman was born in Montreal in 1939. Sidney obtained a B.Sc. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1960 and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1967. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University from 1967-1969 and a visiting Research Fellow at the MRC Laboratory in Cambridge, England from 1969-1971. He joined Yale University in 1971 where he continues as a Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology. In 1989, Sidney Altman and Dr. Thomas Cech were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their role in “the discovery of catalytic properties of RNA”. Sidney Altman's career has primarily been concerned with nucleic acid biochemistry and with the genetics of tRNA expression.

Education:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. B.S. 1960 Physics
Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado Ph.D. 1967 Biophysics
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 1967-69 Mol. Biology
MRC Laboratory, Cambridge, England 1969-71 Mol. Biology

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1989

You can read his Autobiography here..http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1989/altman-autobio.html

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Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
1834–1907

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You can read Interesting data about Mendeleev biography on our site here...chimistry-sciences-about-matter-of-the-universe/interesting-data-about-mendeleev-biography-t239.html

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Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe
(1818–1884)

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German chemist, was born on the 27th of September 1818 at Elliehausen, near Göttingen, where in 1838 he began to study chemistry under F. Wohler.
In 1842 he became assistant to R. W. von Bunsen at Marburg, and three years later to Lyon Playfair at London. From 1847 to 1851 he was engaged at Brunswick in editing the Dictionary of Chemistry started by Liebig, but in the latter year he went to Marburg as successor to Bunsen in the chair of chemistry.
In 1865 he was called to Leipzig in the same capacity, and he died in that city on the 25th of November 1884. Kolbe had an important share in the great development of chemical theory that occurred about the middle of the 19th century, especially in regard to the constitution of organic compounds, which he viewed as derivatives of inorganic ones, formed from the latter - in some cases directly - by simple processes of substitution. Unable to accept Berzelius's doctrine of the unalterability of organic radicals, he also gave a new interpretation to the meaning of copulae under the influence of his fellow-worker Edward Frankland's conception of definite atomic saturation-capacities, and thus contributed in an important degree to the subsequent establishment of the structure theory. Kolbe was a very successful teacher, a ready and vigorous writer, and a brilliant experimentalist whose work revealed the nature of many compounds the composition of which had not previously been understood.
Science Quotes by Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe


The weeds of a seemingly learned and brilliant but actually trivial and empty philosophy of Nature which, after having been replaced some 50 years ago by the exact sciences, is now once more dug up by pseudo scientists from the lumber room of human fallacies, and like a trollop, newly attired in elegant dress and make-up, is smuggled into respectable company, to which she does not belong



He published a Lehrbuch der organischen Chemie in 1854, smaller textbooks of organic and inorganic chemistry in 1877-1883, and Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der theoretischen Chemie in 1881.
From 1870 he was editor of the Journal fiir praktische Chemie, in which many trenchant criticisms of contemporary chemists and their doctrines appeared from his pen.

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Richard Kuhn
1900–1967

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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1938

He was born in Vienna on December 3, 1900. His father, Richard Clemens Kuhn, was an engineer and "Hofrat"; his mother, Angelika Rodler, was a teacher in elementary schools. He was educated at the "Gymnasium" (grammar school). He studied chemistry at Vienna University and later at Munich under R. Willstätter.
When Richard Kuhn in 1926 took over the Chair for General and Analytical Chemistry at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich he set in motion a comprehensive series of investigations into the so-called conjugated double bonds which make up the essential arrangement of the atoms of the polyenes.
The group of the diphenylpolyenes had at this time aroused especial interest because the presence in the carotenoid Crocetin of a chain of double bonds had been successfully demonstrated. Kuhn's sixth report on conjugated double bonds already contains structure determinations of polyene dyes from vegetable materials.
With his syntheses of over 300 new materials belonging to this group Kuhn has by no means sought merely to liberate new substances. In this work he was much more concerned to clarify the general relationships between the chemical structure of these unsaturated substances and their optical, dielectric, and magnetic properties.
The results which he has obtained in this respect form the starting-point for new lines of development in organic chemistry.
Kuhn's work on polyenes led him straight into the chemistry of the carotenoids. In 1930 Karrer clarified the constitution of carotene.
The elementary composition of carotene, C40H56, had previously been ascertained by Willstätter.
In 1931, R. Kuhn (at that time already Professor at Heidelberg), Karrer in Zurich, and Rosenheim in London discovered simultaneously and independently of each other the fact that the carotene in carrots consists of two separate components: one of these, b-carotene, rotates the plane of polarized light to the right, while the other, a-carotene is optically inactive.
In 1933 Kuhn discovered a third carotene isomer which was called g-carotene.
The great physiological and biological significance of carotene lies in the fact that it is hydrolysed in the liver of certain animals so that from one molecule of b-carotene or from two molecules of a-carotene two molecules of Vitamin A, Axerophtol, are formed. This substance is necessary for growth in higher animals and especially for maintaining the normal condition of the mucous membranes.
With several collaborators Kuhn carried out a large number of investigations into the occurrence of carotenoids in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Among his most important results, his discoveries of the following carotenoids and their structure determination should be mentioned:
Physalien from berries of species of Physalis, Helenien, Flavoxanthin, isolated from species of Ranunculus, Violaxanthin from Viola tricolor, unstable Crocetin from saffron, Taraxanthin, Cryptoxanthin from Zea Mays Rubixanthin.
Kuhn also had an important share in establishing the composition of Rodoxanthin and Astaxanthin as well as in discovering the connection of this latter carotenoid with the chromoproteids of the Crustaceans.
Of great interest also are the many contributions Kuhn and his school have made to the perfection of the chromatographic method which is one of the most important aids to the isolation and synthesis of the different representatives of the carotenoid group.
Kuhn's second great field of activity concerns the clarification of the Vitamin B complex. Kuhn has the great merit, together with von Szent-Györgyi and Wagner-Jauregg, of having been the first to isolate the extraordinarily important substance Vitamin B2 (Lactoflavin or Riboflavin).
He has made very important contributions to the elucidation of the chemistry of this substance.
From 5,300 litres skim milk Kuhn and his collaborators succeeded in liberating about 1g of a pure yellow substance, Lactoflavin, whose composition was found to be C17H20O6N4. A breakdown product of the Lactoflavin, which was called Lumiflavin, could be identified with a substance previously prepared from the yellow ferment occurring in yeast. By drawing up a structural formula for Lumiflavin later confirmed in various ways, Kuhn furnished a key to the chemical clarification of Lactoflavin. He himself demonstrated the Lumiflavin formula, which had been found by analytical methods, by a synthesis - namely through the condensation of an odiaminobenzene derivative with Alloxan.
At the beginning of 1939 Kuhn made his second significant discovery in relation to the Vitamin B complex.
Together with Wendt, Andersag, and Westphal, he succeeded in isolating that component of the Vitamin B complex which is designated Vitamin B6, the antidermatitis vitamin, and in a remarkably short time he was able to establish its chemical composition and structure (Ber., 71 (1938) 1534; 72 (1939) 309).
The substance which Kuhn thus elucidated, which he called Adermin, proved to be 2-methyl-3-hydroxy-4,5 -dihydroxymethylpyridine.