Representation in Chemistry
Task: The sections below outline some of the key figures who shaped the academic field of chemistry. As you look through the resources, consider how the following factors may have impacted the representation of different groups of people:
- The economic wealth of a country.
- Access to higher education.
- Discrimination.
Chemistry's 171 Nobel Laureates
Key figures in Chemistry
Below is a list of many of the key figures who contributed to the knowledge we study in IB Chemistry. In the interest of avoiding sexism and both euro/americocentrism, suggestions of other scientists are welcome on the comment form on the Home page.
Abu Mūsā Jābir ibn Hayyān; 722 – 804 (Iranian)Topic 11.1The father of Arabic chemistry. Crucial contributions to alchemy and metallurgy. Underlined the relevance of experimental work to collect evidence.
|
|
William of Ockham: 1285-1347 (English)All topicsIn the development of scientific models he suggested that among competing hypotheses, the ones with the fewest assumptions should be selected. This still stands as one of the techniques used in developing new theories of the natural world.
|
|
Evangelista Torricelli: 1608-1647 (Italian)Topic 1.3 |
|
Blaise Pascal: 1623-1662 (French)Topic 1.3 |
|
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit: 1686-1736 (Polish-German)Topic 5.1 |
|
Anders Celsius: 1701-1744 (Swedish)Topic 5.1 |
|
Luigi Galvani: 1737-1798 (Italian)Topic 9.2 |
|
Antoine Lavoisier: 1743-1794 (French)Topic 1.1The first to realise that combustion is a chemical reaction with oxygen in air. This led to the discovery of the law of the conservation of mass.
Unfortunately he was part of an unpopular tax organisation during the French Revolution so was guillotined in 1794. |
|
Alessandro Volta: 1745-1827 (Italian)Topic 9.2 |
|
John Dalton: 1766-1844 (English)Topic 2.1Dalton was colour blind and one of the first people to put forward an explanation for it (although incorrect). Colour blindness was actually known as Daltonism for that period.
|
|
Amadeo Avogadro: 1776-1856 (Italian)Topic 1.2 |
|
Michael Faraday: 1791-1867 (English)Topic 19.1 |
|
Germain Henri Hess: 1802-1850 (Russian)Topic 5.1The mineral 'hessite', that contains silver(I) telluride is named after Hess. He was responsible for analysing it.
|
|
Thomas Graham: 1805-1869 (Scottish)Topic C.7Known for his work with the diffusion of gases.
|
|
Hermann von Fehling: 1812-1885 (German)Topic B.4Discovered Fehling´s solution, used to distinguish between sugars.
|
|
William Thomson (Baron Kelvin): 1824-1907 (Scottish)Topic 5.1 |
|
August Kekulé: 1829-1896 (German)Topic 10.1Suggested the delocalised structure of benzene following an apparent daydream about a snake eating its own tail.
Kekule's students won 3 of the first 5 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry. |
|
James Clerk Maxwell: 1831-1879 (Scottish)Topic 6.1 |
|
Dimitri Mendeleev: 1834-1907 (Russian)Topic 3.1 |
|
Vladimir Markovnikov: 1838-1904 (Russian)Topic 20.1Some argue he would have been more recognised had he of published his works in English so that Western European scientists could have read them.
|
|
Josiah Willard Gibbs: 1839-1903 (American)Topic 15.1Gibbs Free energy as a predictive tool for spontaneity.
|
|
Ludwig Boltzmann: 1844-1906 (Austrian)Topic 6.1
|
|
Henry Le Chatelier: 1850-1936 (French)Topic 7.1Spent considerable time working on what is now named "the Haber process". It is interesting to consider the effect on the progress of World War II given that Haber's discovery led to the use of chemical weapons (and Le Chatelier was French so on the other side).
|
|
J.J.Thomson: 1856-1940 (English)Topic 2.1 |
|
Friedrich Reinitzer: 1857-1927 (Austrian)Topic A.4 |
|
Svante Arrhenius: 1859-1927 (Swedish)Topic 11.1 |
|
Henry Fenton: 1854-1929 (British)
Topic A.10
Invented Fenton´s reagent.
Max Planck: 1858-1947 (German)Topic 12.1 |
|
Lajos Winkler: 1863-1939 (Hungarian)Topic 9.1 |
|
Walther Nernst : 1864-1941 (German)
Topic C.6Work with the calculation of cell potentials under non-standard conditions.
|
|
George Washington Carver: 1864-1943Topic B.4This agricultural chemist was born a slave and he recognized that legumes return nitrates to soil and discovered industrial uses for crop plants.
|
|
Marie Skłodowska Curie; 1867-1934 (Polish)Topic C.3Was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the only woman to win it twice. The 1911 Chemistry Nobel prize was awarded "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element".
|
|
Fritz Haber: 1868-1934 (German)Topic 7.1 |
|
Ernest Rutherford: 1871-1931 (New Zealander)Topic 2.1 |
|
Martin Lowry: 1874-1936 (English)Topic 8.1Alongside his work on acid theory he also worked for the Trench Warfare Committee and Chemical Warfare Committee during and after World War I.
|
|
Karl Albert Hasselbalch: 1874-1962 (Danish)Topic B.7Known for his work with buffer solutions and the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation.
|
|
Gilbert Lewis: 1875-1946 (American)Topic 4.2Was nominated 41 times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry but never won. He was found dead in 1946 in hi lab where he had been working with HCN.
|
|
Leonor Michaelis: 1875-1942 (German)Topic B.7Known for his work on enzyme kinetics and the Michaelis constant, Km.
|
|
Lawrence Joseph Henderson: 1878-1942 (American)Topic B.7Known for his work with buffer solutions and the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation.
|
|
Lise Meitner: 1878-1968 (Austrian)Option C.3Many feel Meitner should have shared the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Otto Hahn for her work on the nuclear fission of Uranium. She was awarded several awards after her death in light of this including the naming of the element 109, Meitnerium.
|
|
Johannes Nicolaus Brønsted: 1879-1947 (Danish)Topic 8.1Was elected to Danish parliament after World War II after showing his opposition to the Nazi party during the war.
|
|
Albert Einstein: 1879-1955 (German)
Topic C.7The well know energy-mass equivalence.
|
|
Alexander Fleming: 1881-1955 (Scottish)Topic D.2 |
|
Hermann Staudinger: 1881-1965 (German)Topic A.5 |
|
Walther Meissner: 1882-1974 (German) |
|
Norman Haworth: 1883-1950 (British)Topic B.4Received the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structure of sugars.
|
|
Stanley Rossiter Benedict: 1884-1936 (American)Topic B.4Discovered Bendict´s solution, used to detect simple sugars.
|
|
Niels Bohr: 1885-1962 (Danish)Topic 2.1 |
|
Henry Moseley: 1887-1915 (English)Topic 3.1 |
|
Clodomiro Picado Twight: 1887-1944 (Costa Rican)Topic D.2After some of his work was published in 2000, it became apparent that he may have been the first to discover the penicillium fungi that was a successful antibiotic. His records suggest that this discovery was made at least a year before Alexander Fleming.
|
|
William Lawrence Bragg: 1890-1971 (British)Topic A.8As of 2016, Lawrence Bragg is the youngest ever Nobel Laureate in physics. He won it at the age of 25 for his work in X-ray crystallography.
|
|
Louis de Broglie: 1892-1987 (French)Topic 12.1 |
|
Richard Buckminster Fuller: 1895-1983 (American)Topic 4.3 |
|
Irène Joliot-Curie: 1897-1956 (French) Topic A.3Received the 1935 Chemistry Nobel Prize jointly with her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie (French) "in recognition of their synthesis of new radioactive elements".
|
|
Percy Julian: 1899-1975 (American)Option DA research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants. He developed the anti-glaucoma drug physostigmine.
|
|
Fritz London: 1900-1954 (German)Topic 4.4 |
|
Wolfgang Pauli: 1900-1958 (Swiss-American)Topic 2.2 |
|
Werner Heisenberg: 1901-1976 (German)Topic 2.1 |
|
Linus Pauling: 1901-1994 (American)Topic 4.2The only man to win 2 individual Nobel Prizes:
|
|
Joseph Joshua Weiss: 1905-1972 (Austrian)
Topic A.10
Luis Federico Leloir: 1906-1987 (Argentinian)Topic B.4He isolated sugar nucleotides opening the door for clarification of synthesis of sugars, at a time when this field was pretty much a mystery.
|
|
John Bardeen: 1908-1991 (American)Topic A.8Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory
|
|
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin: 1910-1994 (British)Topic A.8Received the 1964 Chemistry Nobel Prize for "for her determinations by X-ray techniques of the structures of important biochemical substances".
|
|
Glenn Seaborg: 1912-1999 (American)Topic 3.1Seaborg was the principal or co-discoverer of ten elements: plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and element 106, which, while he was still living, was named seaborgium in his honor. ("Glenn T. Seaborg", 2016)
|
|
Jacinto Convit: 1913-2014 (Venezuelan)Topic D.1Developed a vaccine to fight leprosy.
|
|
Francis Crick: 1916-2004 (British)Topic B.8 |
|
Maurice Wilkins: 1916-2004 (British)Topic B.8 |
|
Rosalind Franklin: 1920-1958 (English)Topic A.9 |
|
George Porter: 1920-2002 (British)Topic C.1A Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry who said "I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun’s energy. If sunbeams were weapons of war we would have had solar energy centuries ago.”
|
|
Stephanie Kwolek: 1923-2014 (American)Topic A.9The inventor of Kevlar and the 4th women in history to be added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
|
|
James Watson: 1928-present (American)Topic A.9 |
|
Leon Cooper: 1930-present (American)Topic A.8Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory
|
|
John Robert Schrieffer: 1931-present (American)Topic A.8Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory
|
|
Yuri Oganessian: 1933-present (Russian)Topic 2.1Currently (as of 2017) the only living person with an element named after him. Glen Seaborg is the only other person to be alive when an element (Og) was named after him.
|
|
Ei-ichi Negishi: 1935-present (Japanese)Topic A.3He shared the 2010 Chemistry Nobel prize with Richard F. Heck (American) and Akira Suzuki (Japan) "for palladium catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis”.
|
|
Yuan T. Lee: 1936-present (Taiwanese)Topic 16.1Jointly received the 1986 Chemistry Nobel prize with Dudley R. Herschbach (American) and John C. Polanyi (Hungarian) "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes".
|
|
Ada Yonath: 1939-present (Israeli)Topic A.6Received the 2009 Chemistry Nobel Prize together with Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Indian) and Thomas A. Steitz (American) for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.
|
|
Mario J. Molina: 1943-present (Mexican)Topic 1.1Together with F. Sherwood Rowland (American) developed the CFC ozone depletion theory.
|
|
Ahmed Hassan Zewail: 1946-2016 (Egyptian)Topic 6He earned the 1999 Chemistry Nobel Prize for his pioneer study of chemical reactions that take place across femtoseconds.
|
|
Marie Daly: 1921-2003 (American)A step forwards!The first African American woman to earn a PhD in Chemistry in the United States.
|
|
Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju: 1952-present (Indian)Topic 4.4Relevant research in crystal engineering and weak hydrogen bonding.
|
|
Andre Geim: 1957-present (Dutch-British)Topic A.6 |
|
Omar M. Yaghi: 1965-present (Jordanian-American)Topic C.1His main area of work involves the design and production of new classes of compounds known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs),[1][2] zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs), and covalent organic frameworks (COFs)
|
|
Konstantin Novoselov: 1974-present (Russian-British)Topic A.6 |
|