All Resource articles – Page 69

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On This Day – Sep 14 : Ferid Murad was born

He shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro for their discoveries involving nitric oxide as a signal molecule for the cardiovascular system. Nitric oxide is a potent vasodilator that causes relaxation of smooth muscle cells.
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On This Day – Aug 23 : Robert Curl was born

Curl, Richard E. Smalley and Harold Kroto discovered fullerenes, which are Kroto-spherical clusters of carbon atoms. This discovery opened a new branch of chemistry, and all three men were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in recognition of their work.
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On This Day – Sep 01 : Francis William Aston born

Aston developed the mass spectrometer, a device that separates molecular fragments of different mass and measures them with remarkable accuracy. Using the spectrometer, he discovered that neon had two isotopes, ²⁰Ne and ²¹Ne, and was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize for this work.
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On This Day – Aug 15 : Mass spectrometer built

The spectrometer used electromagnetic focusing to exploit very slight differences in the mass of isotopes, which affects the separation for the elements or compounds. Aston used this to discover the two isotopes of neon, ²⁰Ne and ²¹Ne. He was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.
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On This Day – Aug 10 : Synthesis of aspirin

Aspirin was one of the first drugs to become commercial available and is still the most widely used drug in the world. Approximately 35,000 metric tonnes are produced and consumed each year – that’s enough to make more than 100 billion aspirin tablets.
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On This Day – Aug 09 : Amedeo Avogadro was born

He was one of the founders of physical chemistry and is most famous for Avogadro’s Law, which states that equal volumes of different gases contain the same number of molecules. In 22.4 litres of any gas at room temperature and pressure there are 6.02214 x 10²³ molecules, known as Avogadro’s number.
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On This Day – Aug 01 : Preparation of oxygen

He used a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays on a sample of mercury(ll) oxide (HgO) to discover that heating this compound produced a gas, oxygen (O₂). In this environment a mouse could live four times longer than normal. Theories based on Priestley’s work underpin modern chemistry.
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On This Day – Jul 29 : Isidor Isaac Rabi was born

He discovered the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) while researching molecular beams in 1938. Eight years later, Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell used Rabi’s work to invent the NMR spectrometer, a highly useful tool for analysing molecules.
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On This Day – Jul 25 : Rosalind Franklin was born

She carried out crucial x-ray crystallography experiments at King’s College London that helped Crick and Watson determine the structure of DNA. She also led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses.
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On This Day – Jul 16 : Nuclear bomb detonated

The test took place at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The explosion produced the power equivalent to approximately 20,000 tons of tri-nitro-toulene (TNT), and left a crater of radioactive glass in the desert 330 m wide.
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On This Day – Jul 13 : Cannizzaro was born

He was the first chemist to see the full significance of Avogadro’s law. In the 1850s, Cannizzaro suggested comparing everything to the mass of a hydrogen (H) atom. This helped chemists establish chemical formulae and make reliable chemical calculations.
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On This Day – Jul 02 : Sir William Bragg was born

He shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his son William Lawrence Bragg for pioneering x-ray crystallography. This technique uses the diffraction pattern observed from x-rays beams hitting a crystal sample to deduce the structure of complex molecules.
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On This Day – Jul 01 : Charles Goodyear died

He was the inventor of vulcanized rubber, a baked mixture of rubber and sulfur (S) that creates a strengthened compound. The process reinvented rubber as a useful substance that could withstand the variations of day-to-day temperatures. Rubber alone freezes in winter and melts in summer.
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On This Day - Jun 26 : Fluorine was isolated

The existence of fluorine (F) was well known, but for years scientists had failed to isolate it from its compounds, with some even dying in the attempt (called “fluorine martyrs”). Fluorine is the lightest of the halogen elements and has one single stable isotope, ¹⁹F.
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On This Day - Jun 16 : First vanadium isolated

Vanadium (V) is a useful transition metal. Adding small amounts of vanadium to steel considerably increases its strength. Vanadium oxide (V₂O₅) is used as a catalyst in the industrial manufacture of sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄).
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On This Day - Jun 15 : Pilâtre de Rozier died

Pilâtre de Rozier was a pioneer of aviation, but he and his partner Pierre Romain were sadly killed when trying to cross the English Channel in a hot air balloon fuelled by hydrogen. Their balloon deflated and crash-landed just 5 km away from the starting point.
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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.