All RSC Education articles in Non-EiC content – Page 107

Resource
On This Day - Apr 10 : Robert Woodward was born

He is best known for his syntheses of complex organic substances, such as the antimalarial drug quinine, and the steroids cholesterol and cortisone. For this, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.
Resource
On This Day - Apr 09 : Frank Cotton was born

As well as being the youngest person to receive full professorship at MIT at only 31 years of age, he was the pioneer of studying multiple bonding between transition metal atoms. This research began with rhenium (Re) halides and in 1964 he discovered the quadruple bond in the Re₂Cl²⁻ ion.
Resource
On This Day - Mar 24 : Joseph Priestley was born

He is most famous for his discovery of oxygen (O), but he also discovered laughing gas, was the first to carbonate water and was a pioneer of research into electricity.
Resource
On This Day - Mar 11 : Alexander Fleming died

He discovered the antibiotic penicillin, which was the first of many antibiotic drugs that successfully treated a variety of bacterial diseases. This discovery earned him part of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945, shared with Ernst Chain and Howard Florey.
Resource
On This Day - Feb 28 : Linus Pauling was born

He applied quantum mechanics to the study of molecular structure and chemical bonding, earning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. He also introduced the concept of electronegativity.
Resource
On This Day - Feb 22 : Johannes Brønsted was born

Brønsted developed an identical definition of acids and bases simultaneously but independently from English chemist Thomas Lowry in 1923. Acids are recognised by an excess of H⁺ ions, and bases have an excess of OH^- ions.
Resource
On This Day - Feb 20 : Laboratory at Oxford opened

This £60 million state-of-the-art facility has five floors of laboratory and office space covering around 17,000 square metres.
Resource
On This Day - Feb 07 : The first x-ray was taken

Professor John Cox took the x-ray in Montreal to determine the location of a bullet in a man’s leg.
Resource
On This Day - Feb 02 : Leaded petrol was marketed

Before the serious health hazards were known, an organolead compound with the formula (CH₃CH₂)₄Pb was mixed with petrol to increase the power and fuel economy of cars. The advantages of this type of petrol eventually led to a universal switch to leaded fuel.
Resource
On This Day - Jan 19 : Dewar produced solid air

Dewar’s work on cooling gases formed the foundation of the field of cryogenics. He was the first person to produce liquid and solid hydrogen (H₂), and the first to show that liquid oxygen (O₂) is magnetic.
Resource
On This Day - Jan 05 : Harold Clayton Urey died

He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of deuterium in heavy water. Deuterium (²H) is an isotope of hydrogen that contains an extra neutron.
Resource
On This Day - Dec 29 : Discovery of heavy water

The American physical chemist found that heavy water is highly enriched in the hydrogen isotope deuterium (²H), and is used in many applications such as nuclear magnetic resonance, neutron moderation in nuclear power plants and organic chemistry.
Resource
On This Day - Dec 30 : Tungsten filaments patent

American physicist William David Coolidge brought tungsten (W) from laboratory obscurity to the centre of the industrial stage and gave the x-ray a central role in the progress of medicine throughout the world.
Resource
On This Day - Dec 09 : Fritz Haber was born

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his work on the fixation of nitrogen (N₂) from the air. This discovery is not only important for fertilisers but also explosives. He has since been described as the father of chemical warfare.
Resource
On This Day - Nov 17 : Nicolas Lemery was born

His research focus was in the area of acid-base chemistry, but he also prepared a comprehensive dictionary of pharmaceuticals and wrote a chemistry textbook Cours de chymie (1675) that had 31 editions by 1756!
Resource
On This Day - Nov 10 : Ernst Otto Fischer was born

He was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1973 for determining the structure of ferrocene (Fe(C₅H₅)₂), a single iron (Fe) atom sandwiched between two five-sided carbon rings. There are many analogues of ferrocene, which together have led to the rapid growth of organometallic chemistry.
Resource
On This Day - Jun 06 : Richard Smalley was born

Smalley shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl Jr. and Harold Kroto for the discovery of the fullerenes. These are forms of carbon that are either spherical (buckminsterfullerene), tubular (carbon nanotubes) or planar (graphene).
Resource
On This Day - May 22 : Herbert Brown was born

He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979 with Georg Wittig for their contributions to the use of boron- and phosphorous-containing compounds. These compounds are important reagents which are now routinely used in organic synthesis.
Resource
On This Day – Jul 09 : Amedeo Avogadro died

His hypothesis – now known as Avogadro’s Law – states that equal volumes of gases at a given temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules. This is now widely accepted, and the number of molecules in a mole is referred to as Avogadro’s number, 6.023 x 10²³.
Resource
On This Day - Oct 11 : Nobel prize for ozone

They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the formation and decomposition of ozone (O₃). Their research showed that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) cause holes in the Earth’s protective ozone layer.