Week 3

Week 3: Jan. 15 – 21 (Archive)

January 15

  • Henry Cavendish presented the quantitative composition of water before Royal Society (1784).
  • Born in 1785, William Prout suggested that all atomic weights were multiples of weight of hydrogen (H, 1) (Prout's hypothesis); identified hydrochloric acid in the stomach.
  • Born in 1895, Artturi I. Virtanen was a researcher on nutrition and development of food resources; Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1945) "for his research and inventions in agricultural and nutrition chemistry, especially for his fodder preservation method."
  • Born in 1912, Frank H. Westheimer is a researcher on the calculation of electric effects in chemistry.

January 16

  • Born in 1767, Anders G. Ekeberg discovered tantalum (Ta, 73) in 1802.
  • First isolation by ion-exchange chromatography and identification of fermium (Fm, 100) with sample of only about 200 atoms at University of California, Berkeley (1953).

January 17

  • Born in 1781, Robert Hare invented the oxyhydrogen blowtorch (1801).
  • Born in 1825, Edward Frankland developed the theory of valency (1852-60); discovered helium (He, 2) in the sun with N. Lockyer (1868); authority on sanitation and river pollution.

January 18

  • Born in 1861, Hans Goldschmidt invented the alumino-thermite process (often called the “Goldschmidt process”) in 1898. This process is of particular value in welding.

January 19

  • Born in 1885, Harry L. Fisher was an inventor in the field of rubber technology and synthetic rubber.

January 20

  • Born in 1834, Adolph Frank made calcium cyanamide from calcium carbide and nitrogen (1898).

January 21

  • Born in 1845, Edward Mallinckrodt was the founder of Mallinckrodt Chemical Works.
  • Born in 1912, Konrad Bloch was a researcher on cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism; Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1964) with Feodor Lynen "for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism."
  • Dow Chemical Co., Freeport, TX, produced an ingot of magnesium (Mg, 12), the first commercial ingot of any metal to be extracted from seawater (1941).