All RSC Education articles in Non-EiC content – Page 110

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On This Day - May 29 : Explorers climb Everest

At 8848m high, there is only one-third of the oxygen (O₂) at the summit of Everest compared to that at sea level. The two climbers used oxygen gas to help them reach the top, but could only stay for 15 minutes as the oxygen levels ran low.
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On This Day - May 19 : Max Perutz was born

He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962 with John Kendrew for their studies of the structures of haemoglobin and globular proteins using x-ray diffraction. He also investigated the flow of glaciers, making a crystallographic study of the transformation of snow into glacial ice.
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On This Day - May 12 : Dorothy Hodgkin was born

Hodgkin is one of the most famous female chemists, and is known for her investigations into the structure of natural products using x-ray analysis. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for these contributions.
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On This Day - May 04 : Louis Thénard was born

He was a teacher above anything else and published the textbook Traité de chimie élémentaire, théorique et pratique (4 vols., Paris, 1813-16). Thénard’s research career included the important discoveries of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and Thénard ’s blue, which is a cheap pigment used to colour porcelain.
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On This Day - Apr 29 : Harold Urey was born

Urey co-discovered deuterium (²H) with Ferdinand Brickwedde and George Murphy. They produced the first measurable samples of the isotope from liquefied hydrogen.
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On This Day - Apr 22 : Early chemical warfare

The German army attacked the French, Canadian and Algerian troops with chlorine (Cl₂) gas. A total of 50,965 tons of chemical agents were deployed during the conflict including chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas.
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On This Day - Apr 12 : Otto Meyerhoff was born

He was awarded half the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1922 for describing the way muscle tissue absorbs oxygen (O₂) and converts it to lactic acid. He also discovered that glycogen is converted into lactic acid when the muscle contracts.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.