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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,

#6101

Karl Arnold

1853 - 1929 (76 years)

Karl Arnold variously Carl Johann Moritz Arnold or Johann Karl Moritz Arnold was a German chemist and mountaineer. He served as Director and briefly as Vice-Chancellor of the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover. His published works on organic chemistry were of importance to veterinarians, medical students and pharmacists. He was also an accomplished alpinist and chairman of the Hanover section of the German-Austrian Alpine Association.

#6102

Charles Frédéric Kuhlmann

Charles Frédéric Kuhlmann

1803 - 1881 (78 years)

Charles Frédéric Kuhlmann was a French chemist who patented the reaction for converting ammonia to nitric acid, which was later used in the Ostwald process. He was both a research scientist and a professor at Université Lille Nord de France. He promoted chemical engineering education for science graduates in Lille and supported the development of École centrale de Lille .

#6103

John Michael Maisch

John Michael Maisch

1831 - 1893 (62 years)

John Michael Maisch was a United States pharmacist, the "father of adequate pharmaceutical legislation." Biography Germany John Michael Maisch was born in Hanau, Germany, the son of Conrad Maisch, a merchant. He received his early education in the free schools of Hanau. When he was 12, his parents apprenticed him to a goldsmith. This only lasted three days since school officials disapproved and demanded his return to academic studies. One of his teachers introduced him to the study of mineralogy and microscopy, and he did practical fieldwork in the Hanau vicinity. He conceived an ambition for a university education.

#6104

Kees Posthumus

1902 - 1972 (70 years)

Kees Posthumus was a Dutch chemist. He was the second rector magnificus of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Biography Kees Posthumus was born in Harlingen, Friesland, as the son of a wholesaler in wood. He attended HBS and then went on to study chemistry at the University of Groningen. He attained his propaedeuse there, whereupon he moved to the University of Leiden to continue his studies. While there he came into contact with Albert Einstein and with Johan Huizinga . Upon gaining his engineering degree he took a teaching position at the Christian HBS in Leiden, while working on his doctorate under prof.dr.

#6105

Henry Stephen

1889 - 1965 (76 years)

Henry Stephen OBE, DSc. was an English chemist known for inventing the Stephen Reaction, a method of deriving aldehydes from nitriles . Career Leonard Henry Nelson Stephen, later known as Henry Stephen, was born at 11 Dalton Terrace, Manchester, son of John Stephen, printer, and Mary Eliza .

#6106

Arthur Vogel

1905 - 1966 (61 years)

Arthur Israel Vogel was a British chemist known for his Chemistry textbooks. He became the head of the chemistry department at Woolwich Polytechnic at the age of 27. Academic career Vogel's first job was at Queen Mary University of London, continuing from his BSc, working with Professor J. R. Partington and achieving an MSc. After a short spell at University College London, he joined Imperial College London and the research school of Sir Jocelyn Field Thorpe. During his time there he received a D.Sc for his research on surface tension, electrochemistry, organic synthesis and sulphur chemist...

#6107

Traill Green

1813 - 1897 (84 years)

Dr. Traill Green M.D., LL.D was a medical doctor, scientist, and educator. Green was actively engaged with the early years of Lafayette College, serving at various times as a professor, trustee, and acting president. He was a civic leader in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he lived most of his life.

#6108

William Garnett

1850 - 1932 (82 years)

Dr. William Garnett was a British professor and educational adviser, specialising in physics and mechanics and taking a special interest in electric street lighting. Early years Garnett was born in Portsea, Portsmouth, England in 1850, the son of William Garnett. In January 1863 he entered the City of London School, where he was a pupil of Thomas Hall. In the May 1866 examination, he obtained the first Royal Exhibition, tenable at the Royal School of Mines and College of Chemistry, and during the winter session, he studied under Dr. Edward Frankland and Professor John Tyndall, but in the following year, resigned the Exhibition and returned to the City of London School.

#6109

David Chapman

1869 - 1958 (89 years)

David Leonard Chapman FRS was an English physical chemist, whose name is associated with the Chapman-Jouguet treatment and the Gouy-Chapman layer . He was a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford for 37 years, and was in charge there of the last college laboratory at the University of Oxford.

#6110

Edward Parrish

1822 - 1872 (50 years)

Edward Parrish was an American pharmacist. He was the first president of Swarthmore College. Biography He was the son of Philadelphia physician Joseph Parrish . He studied at a Friends' school, and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1842. After a course of training at his brother Dillwyn's shop , in 1843 he purchased a drug store at the northwest corner of Ninth and Chestnut Streets and began his practice. He was elected to membership in the College of Pharmacy in 1843, in 1845 a trustee, and in 1854 secretary of the College. He was appointed professor of materia medica i...

#6111

Hope Winch

1894 - 1944 (50 years)

Hope Constance Monica Winch was an English pharmacist and academic. Biography Winch was born in the vicarage in the village of Brompton, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire, where her father Reverend George Winch was vicar of the village's St Thomas' Church. Her mother, Elizabeth Maude Winch was the daughter of Thomas Buston Crofton, also from the village.

#6112

Johann Friedrich Klotzsch

1805 - 1860 (55 years)

Johann Friedrich Klotzsch was a German pharmacist and botanist. His principal work was in the field of mycology, with the study and description of many species of mushroom. Klotzsch was born in Wittenberg. Originally trained as a pharmacist, he later enrolled in pharmaceutical and botanical studies in Berlin. In 1830–32 he was curator of William Jackson Hooker's herbarium at the University of Glasgow. Beginning in 1834 he collected plants in Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, Styria and possibly Hungary. In 1838 he replaced Adelbert von Chamisso as curator and director of the Royal Herbarium in Berli...

#6113

William C. Goggin

1911 - 1988 (77 years)

William C. Goggin was an American chemist, business manager and business theorist, noted for developing the concept of Multidimensional organization at Dow Corning. Biography Born in Alma, Michigan, Goggin obtained his BS in chemistry, Physics and Mathematics at Alma College in 1933, and at the University of Michigan his BS in Electrical Engineering in 1935 and his MS in Electrical Engineering in 1936.

#6114

Kennedy J. P. Orton

1872 - 1930 (58 years)

Kennedy J. P. Orton was a British chemist. Initially he studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital, but there he became interested in chemistry and moved to St. John's College, Cambridge. He then obtained a Ph.D. summa cum laude in Heidelberg under Karl von Auwers, before working for a year with Sir William Ramsey at University College, London. He was then lecturer and demonstrator of Chemistry at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, before in 1903 being appointed Professor of Chemistry at University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he headed the department until his death. He was elected a Fellow ...

#6115

Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari

Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari

838 - 870 (32 years)

Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari , was a Persian Muslim scholar, physician and psychologist, who produced one of the first Islamic encyclopedia of medicine titled Firdaws al-Hikmah . Ali ibn Sahl spoke Syriac and Greek, the two sources of the medical tradition of Antiquity which had been lost by medieval Europe, and transcribed in meticulous calligraphy. His most famous student was the physician and alchemist Abu Bakr al-Razi . Al-Tabari wrote the first encyclopedic work on medicine. He lived for over 70 years and interacted with important figures of the time, such as Muslim caliphs, governors, and eminent scholars.

#6116

Tom Cottrell

1923 - 1973 (50 years)

Prof Tom Leadbetter Cottrell DSc FRSE was an influential Scottish chemist. He is best remembered as a co-founder and first Principal of the University of Stirling, and founder of the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling. He wrote several popular academic textbooks on the subject of chemistry.

#6117

Edmund Załęski

1863 - 1932 (69 years)

Edmund Załęski was a Polish chemist, agrotechnician, and plant breeder. He was a professor at the Agricultural University of Dublany, as well as a professor at Jagiellonian University, where he also served as rector from 1930–1931.

#6118

James Eights

1798 - 1882 (84 years)

James Eights was an American physician, scientist, and artist. He was born in Albany, New York, the son of physician Jonathan Eights and Alida Wynkoop. James also became a physician and was appointed an examiner at a local engineering school which is now known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

#6119

William Mansfield Clark

William Mansfield Clark

1884 - 1964 (80 years)

William Mansfield Clark was an American chemist and professor at the Johns Hopkins University. He studied oxidation-reduction reactions and was a pioneer of medical biochemistry. Clark was born in Tivoli, New York, in a clergy family and studied at Hotchkiss School and Williams College before entering Johns Hopkins University, where he received a PhD in chemistry under H.N. Morse with a dissertation on A contribution to the investigation of the temperature coefficient of osmotic pressure: a redetermination of the osmotic pressures of cane sugar at 20°. He then worked on dairy bacteriology in ...

#6120

Cyril G. Hopkins

Cyril G. Hopkins

1866 - 1919 (53 years)

Cyril George Hopkins was an American agricultural chemist who initiated the Illinois long-term selection experiment in 1896. He was also noted for his extensive research and writings on the soil of Illinois.

#6121

Barnet Woolf

1902 - 1983 (81 years)

Barnet Woolf FRSE was a 20th-century British scientist, whose disciplines had a broad scope. He made lasting contributions to biochemistry, genetics, epidemiology, nutrition, public health, statistics, and computer science. His name appears in the Hanes-Woolf plot: a mathematical plotting of chemical reaction times.

#6122

Roscoe G. Dickinson

1894 - 1945 (51 years)

Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson was an American chemist, known primarily for his work on X-ray crystallography. As professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology , he was the doctoral advisor of Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and of Arnold O. Beckman, inventor of the pH meter.

#6123

Gerhard Krohn Rollefson

1900 - 1955 (55 years)

Gerhard Krohn Rollefson was a professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Background and career Rollefson received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His dissertation concerned Ebullioscopic constant measurement of mixed liquid media. He then completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Rollefson was a specialist in physical chemistry and studied the impact of X-ray radiation on a variety of materials. Rollefson published a book with Milton Burton in 1939: Photochemist...

#6124

Herman Francis Mark

1895 - 1992 (97 years)

Herman Francis Mark was an Austrian-American chemist regarded for his contributions to the development of polymer science. Mark's x-ray diffraction work on the molecular structure of fibers provided important evidence for the macromolecular theory of polymer structure. Together with Houwink he formulated an equation, now called the Mark–Houwink or Mark–Houwink–Sakurada equation, describing the dependence of the intrinsic viscosity of a polymer on its relative molecular mass . He was a long-time faculty at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In 1946, he established the Journal of Polymer Scie...

#6125

Ian Heilbron

1886 - 1959 (73 years)

Sir Ian Heilbron DSO FRS was a Scottish chemist, who pioneered organic chemistry developed for therapeutic and industrial use. Early life and education Isidor Morris Heilbron was born in Glasgow on 6 November 1886 to a wine merchant and his wife . He was Jewish.

#6126

Stanley Rossiter Benedict

Stanley Rossiter Benedict

1884 - 1936 (52 years)

Stanley Rossiter Benedict was an American chemist best known for discovering Benedict's reagent, a solution that detects certain sugars. Personal life Stanley Rossiter Benedict was born on March 17, 1884, to a big family of six children in Cincinnati. His father, Wayland Richardson Benedict was a professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Cincinnati. His mother, Anne Kendrick Benedict, was a writer and a teacher and his maternal grandmother, a Professor of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit at the University of Rochester and was an editor of the King James Version of the Bible.

#6127

George de Hevesy

George de Hevesy

1885 - 1966 (81 years)

George Charles de Hevesy was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study chemical processes such as in the metabolism of animals. He also co-discovered the element hafnium.

#6128

Willis H. Flygare

1936 - 1981 (45 years)

Willis H. Flygare was an American physical chemist and professor at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Background Flygare was born in Jackson, Minnesota. He was the son of Willis B. and Doris H. Flygare, both of whom were of Scandinavian descent. He attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1958 with majors in chemistry, physics, and mathematics. He later attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1961.

#6129

Edgar Steacie

1900 - 1962 (62 years)

Edgar William Richard Steacie was a Canadian physical chemist and president of the National Research Council of Canada from 1952 to 1962. Education Born in Montreal, Quebec, the only child of Richard Steacie and Alice Kate McWood, he studied a year at the Royal Military College of Canada. In 1923, he received his Bachelor of Science degree and his Ph.D. in 1926 from McGill University.

#6130

J. A. F. Rook

1926 - 1987 (61 years)

John Allan Fynes Rook CBE FRSE FIB FRIC was a 20th-century British chemist connected to the British dairy industry. He was President of the British Society of Animal Production 1982/83. Life He was born on 1 May 1926 the son of Edward Fynes Rook, near Scarborough in North Yorkshire. He was educated at Scarborough High School for Boys, then studied Chemistry at the University of Wales graduating BSc in 1947. He then won an Agricultural Research Council scholarship to do further postgraduate studies.

#6131

Hobart Hurd Willard

1881 - 1974 (93 years)

Hobart Hurd Willard was an analytical chemist and inorganic chemist who spent most of his career at the University of Michigan. He was known for his teaching skill and his authorship of widely used textbooks. His research interests were wide-ranging and involved the characterization of perchloric acid and periodic acid salts.

#6132

Frederick George Mann

1897 - 1982 (85 years)

Frederick George Mann was a British organic chemist. Academic career He completed his doctoral studies at Downing College, Cambridge under Sir William Pope, graduating in 1923. He continued at Downing as an assistant lecturer until 1930, when he was appointed to a lectureship at Trinity College. He spent his entire academic career at Cambridge, retiring in 1964.

#6133

A. D. Walsh

1916 - 1977 (61 years)

Arthur Donald Walsh FRS FRSE FRIC was a British chemist, who served as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Dundee. He is usually referred to as Donald Walsh. He was the creator of the Walsh diagram and Walsh's Rules.

#6134

Paul L. Kirk

1902 - 1970 (68 years)

Paul Leland Kirk was a biochemist, criminalist and participant in the Manhattan Project who was specialized in microscopy. He also investigated the bedroom in which Sam Sheppard supposedly murdered his wife and provided the key blood spatter evidence that led to his acquittal in a retrial over 12 years after the murder. The highest honor one can receive in the criminalistics section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences carries Kirk's name.

#6135

Edmund Hirst

1898 - 1975 (77 years)

Sir Edmund Langley Hirst CBE FRS FRSE , was a British chemist. Life Hirst was born in Preston, Lancashire on 21 July 1898 the son of Elizabeth and Rev Sim Hirst a Baptist minister. He was educated in Burnley, Northgate Grammar School, Ipswich, Madras College in St Andrews, then studied chemistry at the University of St Andrews with a Carnegie Scholarship.

#6136

Robert Elderfield

Robert Elderfield

1904 - 1979 (75 years)

Robert Cooley Elderfield was an American chemist. He was born in Niagara Falls, New York, United States. He studied at the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, later at the University of Michigan receiving his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1930. He worked at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research from 1930 till 1936 when he changed to Columbia University. He was moved to University of Michigan in 1952.

#6137

Thomas Kilgore Sherwood

1903 - 1976 (73 years)

Thomas Kilgore Sherwood was a noted American chemical engineer and a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering. Biography Sherwood was born in Columbus, Ohio, and spent much of his youth in Montreal. In 1923 he received his B.S. from McGill University, and entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his Ph.D. His dissertation, "The Mechanism of the Drying of Solids," was completed in 1929, a year after he had become assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In 1930 he returned to MIT as assistant professor where he remained until his retirement, serving as associate professor , professor , and dean of engineering .

#6138

Frank Spedding

1902 - 1984 (82 years)

Frank Harold Spedding was a Canadian American chemist. He was a renowned expert on rare earth elements, and on extraction of metals from minerals. The uranium extraction process helped make it possible for the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs.

#6139

Aharon Katzir

1913 - 1972 (59 years)

Aharon Katzir was an Israeli scientist who was known as a pioneer in the study of the electrochemistry of biopolymers. Biography Born 1914 in Łódź, Poland, he moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1925, where he taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. There, he adopted his Hebrew surname Katzir. He was a faculty member at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences, Rehovot, Israel as well as at the department of medical physics and biophysics at UC Berkeley, California.

#6140

John Kenneth Stille

1930 - 1989 (59 years)

John Kenneth Stille was an American chemist who discovered the Stille reaction. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Arizona before serving in the Navy during the Korean War. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, where he studied under Carl Shipp Marvel. Stille began his independent career at the University of Iowa in 1957 before moving to Colorado State University in 1977.

#6141

Treat Baldwin Johnson

1875 - 1947 (72 years)

Treat Baldwin Johnson was an American organic chemist and Sterling Professor at Yale University from 1928–1943. Early life and education Treat Baldwin Johnson was born in Bethany, Connecticut, on 29 March 1875, the oldest of three sons of Dwight Lauren Johnson and Harriet Adeline Baldwin. He was educated at Ansonia high school and graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in 1898, where he obtained work as a laboratory assistant and began a Ph.D. degree under the supervision of H L Wheeler. By the time of its completion in 1901, Johnson had published seven scientific p...

#6142

Neil Kensington Adam

1891 - 1973 (82 years)

Neil Kensington Adam was a British chemist. Education Adam was born in Cambridge, the first of three children of James Adam , a Classics don, and his classicist wife Adela Marion . His sister Barbara was a noted sociologist and criminologist, while his brother Captain Arthur Innes Adam was killed in France on 16 September 1916. His maternal uncle was Sir Alfred Kensington, a judge in the Chief Court of the Punjab.

#6143

Kathleen Lonsdale

Kathleen Lonsdale

1903 - 1971 (68 years)

Dame Kathleen Lonsdale was an Irish crystallographer, pacifist, and prison reform activist. She proved, in 1929, that the benzene ring is flat by using X-ray diffraction methods to elucidate the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She was the first to use Fourier spectral methods while solving the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931. During her career she attained several firsts for female scientists, including being one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945 , first female professor at University College London, first woman president of the International Union ...

#6144

Earl Muetterties

Earl Muetterties

1927 - 1984 (57 years)

Earl Muetterties , was an American inorganic chemist born in Illinois, who is known for his experimental work with boranes, homogeneous catalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, fluxional processes in organometallic complexes and apicophilicity.

#6145

James Kendall

1889 - 1978 (89 years)

James Pickering Kendall FRS FRSE was a British chemist. Life Kendall was born in Chobham, Surrey to soldier William Henry Kendall of the Royal Horse Artillery, and his second wife Rebecca Pickering. He attended the local village school and then, from 1900, Farnham Grammar School. From 1907 to 1910, he studied at the University of Edinburgh graduating with both a BSc and MA. In 1912, with the support of a scholarship, he went to the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry in Stockholm to work with Arrhenius on electrolytes.

#6146

James William McBain

1882 - 1953 (71 years)

James William McBain FRS was a Canadiann chemist. He gained a Master of Arts at Toronto University and a Doctor of Science at Heidelberg University. He carried out pioneering work in the area of micelles at the University of Bristol. As early as 1913 he postulated the existence of "colloidal ions", now known as micelles, to explain the good electrolytic conductivity of sodium palmitate solutions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1923 He won their Davy Medal in 1939.

#6147

Hugh Stott Taylor

1890 - 1974 (84 years)

Sir Hugh Stott Taylor was an English chemist primarily interested in catalysis. In 1925, in a landmark contribution to catalytic theory, Taylor suggested that a catalysed chemical reaction is not catalysed over the entire solid surface of the catalyst but only at certain 'active sites' or centres. He also developed important methods for procuring heavy water during World War II and pioneered the use of stable isotopes in studying chemical reactions.

#6148

James B. Sumner

James B. Sumner

1887 - 1955 (68 years)

James Batcheller Sumner was an American biochemist. He discovered that enzymes can be crystallized, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946 with John Howard Northrop and Wendell Meredith Stanley. He was also the first to prove that enzymes are proteins.

#6149

Joseph Edward Mayer

1904 - 1983 (79 years)

Joseph Edward Mayer was a chemist who formulated the Mayer expansion in statistical field theory. He was professor of chemistry at the University of California San Diego from 1960 to 1972, and previously at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He was married to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer from 1930 until her death in 1972. He went to work with James Franck in Göttingen, Germany in 1929, where he met Maria, a student of Max Born. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and the American Philosophical Society .

#6150

William Giauque

William Giauque

1895 - 1982 (87 years)

William Francis Giauque was a Canadian-born American chemist and Nobel laureate recognized in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero. He spent virtually all of his educational and professional career at the University of California, Berkeley.

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