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Svante August Arrhenius was born at Uppalsa, Sweden, on February 19, 1859 His intelligence and creativity were apparent nt from an early age taught himself to read when he was three Although credit ted with many scientific innovations, he remains best known for his ionic theory of solutions, For which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1903 Arrhenius heirs died in Stockholm on October 2, 1927 Science is a human endeavor subject to human frailties and governed by personalities, politics, and prejudice ces. One of the best illustrations of the often bumpy path of the advancement of scientific knowledge is the story of Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius. When Arrhenius heirs began his doctorate at the University of Uppsala around 1880, he chose to study the passage of electricity through solutions. This was a problem that had baffled scientists for a century, The first experiments had been done in the 17 70 s by Cavendish, who corn pared the conductivity of salt solutions with that of rain water, using his own physiological reaction to the electric shocks he re item!
Arrhenius had an array of instruments to measure electric current, but the process of carefully weighing, meas using, and recording data from a multitude of experiments was a tedious one. After his long series of experiments were performed, Arrhenius quit his laboratory bench and returned to his country home to try to formulate a model that could account for his data, He wrote, I got the idea in the night of the 17 th of May in the year 1883, and I could not s leep that night until I had worked through the whole problem. His idea was that ions were responsible for conducting electricity through a solution. B ack at Usa]a, Arrhenius took his doctoral dissertation containing the new theo ry to his advisor, Professor Cleve, an eminent chemist and the discoverer of the elements holmium and thulium. Cleves uninterested response was what Arrhenius had expected. It was in keeping with Cities resistance to new ideas he had not even accepted Mendeleevs periodic table, introduced ten years earlier.
It is a long standing custom that before a doctoral degree is granted the disse rotation must be defended before a panel of professors. Although this procedure i s still followed at most universities today, the problems are usually worked out in private with the evaluating professors before the actual defense. However, w hen Arrhenius did it, the dissert tion defense was an open debate, which could be rancorous and humiliating. Knowing that it would be unwise to antagonize his professors, Arrhenius downplayed his convictions about his new theory as he de t ended his dissertation. His diplomacy paid off: he was awarded his degree, album t reluctantly, as the professor still did not believe his model and considered him to be a marginal scientist, at best. Such a setback could have ende d his scientific career, but Arrhenius was a crusader; he was determined to see his theory triumph.
Recognizing his low credibility in his home coun try, he sen t his dissertation first to Rudolf Clausius, a German scientist who had fimnulat ed the second law of thermodynamics, but Clausius wasnt interested. He next app roached Lothar Meyer, another German scientist who had gained prominence for his work on the periodicity of the clements, but Meyer was also unresponsive. Final ly, Arrhenius found the right champion in Wilhelm Ostwald, a German profes sor o f chemistry at Riga. Ostwald, already known as a defender of revo lectionary chem ical causes, fully accepted the idea that reactions in solu tion often involve i ons. In 1885 Arrhenius began work ing in Ostwald's laboratory, continue ng his research on ions. Reading everything he could find on the sub jeer, he ca me across a research paper written by a Dutch scientist, Jacobus vant Heir, whi ch was particularly helpful in placing the ionic theory on firmer ground.
In 1887 Arrhenius went to Amsterdam to nicer van Heft At 22 years of age, vant Help had postulated the existence of stereochemistry; that is, that atoms in molecules have definite relative positions in space. This theory was initially criticized harshly, and vant Heft, aided by Ostwald, had to fight to have it accepted. The ionic theory was yet another unaccepted theory for which both Ostwald and vant Heft would extend their support. By the time Arrhenius returned from Amsterdam, Ostwald had moved to Leipzig, where he had be come professor of chemistry. It was there that Ostwald and Arrhenius put together a promotional strategy that would have done credit to a canny politician. In the then new journal Zeitschrift fur Physikalische Chemical, Ostwald wrote about the ionic theory, and finally the European scientific establishment began to listen.
Arrhenius classic paper On the Dissociation of Substances in Are ous Solulhms was published in 1887. The ionic theory had become one of thc most ctmtroversal issues in science. Although Ostwald, vant Holt, and Arrhenius continued to champion the cause vigorously. many scientists remained vehemently opposed to the theory. In fact, even though Arrhenius was by then a prominent scientist, his appointment as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Stockholm was highly con traversal. Ultimately, the ionic theory triumphed.
Arrhenius fame spread, and honors were heaped on him, culminating in tile Nobel Prize in chemistry. Nol one to rest on his laurels, Arrhenius turned to new fields, in cluding astronomy; he formulated a new theory that the solar system may have come into being through the collision of stars. His exceptional versatility led him to study the use of serums to tight disease, energy resources and conservation, and the origin of life.
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Research essay sample on Nobel Prize In Chemistry Prize In Chemistry Arrhenius
