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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,

#6701

Arthur Heffter

1859 - 1925 (66 years)

Arthur Carl Wilhelm Heffter was a German pharmacologist and chemist. He was the first chairman of the German Society of Pharmacologists, and was largely responsible for the first Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology. He isolated mescaline from the peyote cactus in 1897, the first such isolation of a naturally occurring psychedelic substance in pure form. In addition, he conducted experiments on its effects by comparing the effects of peyote and mescaline on himself.

#6702

Karl Spiro

1867 - 1932 (65 years)

Karl Spiro was a German biologist, and physical chemist. Spiro was born in Berlin. In 1889 he received his PhD from the University of Würzburg as a student of Emil Fischer, then in 1893 obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Leipzig. He later served as an assistant to Oswald Schmiedeberg and Franz Hofmeister at the University of Strasbourg, where in 1912 he became an honorary professor. From 1919 to 1921 he worked as a pharmacologist in the research laboratories of Sandoz AG . In 1921 he succeeded Gustav von Bunge as professor of physical chemistry at the University of Basel, where he also served as director of the institute for physiological chemistry.

#6703

Paul Traugott Meissner

Paul Traugott Meissner

1778 - 1864 (86 years)

Paul Traugott Meissner was an Austrian chemist. In 1797 he moved to Vienna, where he attended lectures given by Joseph Franz von Jacquin . Later, he continued his studies on a tour through Germany. He earned a degree as magister of pharmacy from the University of Pest, subsequently returning to Transylvania, where he took over management of a pharmacy in Kronstadt.

#6704

Max Tishler

1906 - 1989 (83 years)

Max Tishler was president of Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories where he led the research teams that synthesized ascorbic acid, riboflavin, cortisone, pyridoxine, pantothenic acid, nicotinamide, methionine, threonine, and tryptophan. He also developed the fermentation processes for actinomycin, vitamin B12, streptomycin, and penicillin. Tishler invented sulfaquinoxaline for the treatment for coccidiosis.

#6705

Andrew Plummer

1697 - 1756 (59 years)

Andrew Plummer FRCP was a Scottish physician and chemist. He was professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh from 1726 to 1755. He developed ideas on the attractive and repulsive forces involved in chemical affinity, which later had influence on his successors William Cullen and Joseph Black. He compounded "Plummer's pills", a mixture of calomel and antimony sulfide with guaiacum; the pills were originally compounded to treat psoriasis but were used for more than a century as an antisyphilitic.

#6706

Edwin R. Gilliland

1909 - 1973 (64 years)

Edwin Richard Gilliland was an American chemical engineer and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gilliland was born on July 10, 1909, in El Reno, Oklahoma and moved with his family to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1918. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in 1930 and an M.S. from the Pennsylvania State University in 1931. He received his Sc.D. from MIT in 1933 under the direction of Thomas Kilgore Sherwood for work on a wetted-wall column technique used in mass-transfer. With Professor Warren K. Lewis, Gilliland developed math...

#6707

Wilhelm Steinkopf

1879 - 1949 (70 years)

Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was a German chemist. Today he is mostly remembered for his work on the production of mustard gas during World War I. Life Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was born on 28 June 1879 in Staßfurt, in the Prussian Province of Saxony in the German Empire, the son of Gustav Friedrich Steinkopf, a merchant, and his wife Elise Steinkopf .

#6708

Hertha Sponer

1895 - 1968 (73 years)

Hertha Sponer was a German physicist and chemist who contributed to modern quantum mechanics and molecular physics and was the first woman on the physics faculty of Duke University. She was the older sister of philologist and resistance fighter Margot Sponer.

#6709

George Wallace Kenner

1922 - 1978 (56 years)

George Wallace Kenner FRS was a British organic chemist. He was born in Sheffield in 1922, the son of Prof. James Kenner. During his childhood, he went to Didsbury Preparatory School in 1928 and moved to Manchester Grammar School in 1934. He was appointed to the first Heath Harrison Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Liverpool 1957–1976. He did his MSc and PhD degrees under Lord Todd at Manchester and Cambridge Universities in UK. He married Jillian Bird in 1951 and they had two daughters both born in Cambridge. He was faculty member at the Cambridge University for 15 years befor...

#6710

Franz Hein

1892 - 1976 (84 years)

Franz Hein was a German scientist and artist. History Franz Hein was born in Grötzingen , Germany. His high school years were spent in Leipzig, as well as, his college years at the University of Leipzig. Hein completed his Ph.D. in 1917 on optical studies of bismuth and triphenylmethane derivatives. Hein made Assistant at the University and in 1920 Oberassistent. He continued working on his Habilitation becoming a professor in 1923. With the completion of his Habilitation, Hein went to work on organometallic system electrochemistry.

#6711

Erich Clar

1902 - 1987 (85 years)

Erich Clar was an Austrian organic chemist who studied polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon chemistry. He is considered as the father of that field. In 1941, he authored "Aromatische Kohlenwasserstoffe" and in 1964 the greatly expanded two-volume Polycyclic Hydrocarbons, which described the syntheses, properties, and UV-visible absorption spectra of hundreds of PAHs. He discovered the Clar reaction of the cyclic ketone perinaphthenone to form dibenzo[cd,lm]perylene in a 400 C melt of zinc dust, zinc chloride, and sodium chloride. He created the Sextet Theory, now eponymously called Clar's rule, to describe the behavior of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon isomers.

#6712

Francisco Zaera

Francisco Zaera is a Venezuelan-American chemist, currently a distinguished professor at University of California, Riverside and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society and the American Vacuum Society.

#6713

Harold Urey

1893 - 1981 (88 years)

Harold Clayton Urey was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, as well as contributing to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.

#6714

Paul Hugh Emmett

Paul Hugh Emmett

1900 - 1985 (85 years)

Paul Hugh Emmett was an American chemist best known for his pioneering work in the field of catalysis and for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He spearheaded the research to separate isotopes of uranium and to develop a corrosive uranium gas. Emmett also made significant contributions to BET Theory which explains the relationship between surface area and gas adsorption. He served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University for 23 years throughout his scientific career.

#6715

Lars Onsager

1903 - 1976 (73 years)

Lars Onsager was an American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1968.

#6716

William Draper Harkins

1873 - 1951 (78 years)

William Draper Harkins was an American physical chemist, noted for his contributions to surface chemistry and nuclear chemistry. Harkins researched the structure of the atomic nucleus and was the first to propose the principle of nuclear fusion, four years before Jean Baptiste Perrin published his theory in 1919-20. His findings enabled, among other things, the development of the H-bomb. As a visiting professor with Fritz Haber in 1909, he was introduced to the study of surface tension, and he began work on the theory of solutions and solubility during a visit to MIT in 1909-1910.

#6717

Stephen Brunauer

1903 - 1986 (83 years)

Stephen Brunauer was an American research chemist, government scientist, and university teacher. He resigned from his position with the U.S. Navy during the McCarthy era, when he found it impossible to refute anonymous charges that he was disloyal to the U.S.

#6718

Takeru Higuchi

1918 - 1987 (69 years)

Takeru Higuchi was an American chemist who was widely known as "the father of physical pharmacy". He invented the time-release medication capsule, which would release medicine slowly into the bloodstream.

#6719

Morris S. Kharasch

1895 - 1957 (62 years)

Morris Selig Kharasch was a pioneering organic chemist best known for his work with free radical additions and polymerizations. He defined the peroxide effect, explaining how an anti-Markovnikov orientation could be achieved via free radical addition. Kharasch was born in the Russian Empire in 1895 and immigrated to the United States at the age of 13. In 1919, he completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago and spent most of his professional career there.

#6720

Peter Debye

1884 - 1966 (82 years)

Peter Joseph William Debye was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, Debye enrolled in the Aachen University of Technology in 1901. In 1905, he completed his first degree in electrical engineering. He published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents, in 1907. At Aachen, he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye.

#6721

George C. Pimentel

1922 - 1989 (67 years)

George Claude Pimentel was a preeminent chemist and researcher. He was also dedicated to science education and public service. the inventor of the chemical laser. He developed the technique of matrix isolation in low-temperature chemistry. He also developed time-resolved infrared spectroscopy to study radicals and other transient species. In the late 1960s, Pimentel led the University of California team that designed the infrared spectrometer for the Mars Mariner 6 and 7 missions that analyzed the surface and atmosphere of Mars.

#6722

Frederick Rossini

1899 - 1990 (91 years)

Frederick Dominic Rossini was an American thermodynamicist noted for his work in chemical thermodynamics. In 1920, at the age of twenty-one, Rossini entered Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and soon was awarded a full-time teaching scholarship. He graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1925, followed by an M.S. degree in science in physical chemistry in 1926.

#6723

Robert E. Rundle

1915 - 1963 (48 years)

Robert Eugene Rundle was an American chemist and crystallographer. He was a professor at Iowa State University and fellow of the American Physical Society. Early life and education Rundle was born in Orleans, Nebraska in 1915. He attended University of Nebraska where he completed a bachelor of science in 1937 and a master's degree in 1938. He completed a Ph.D. in 1941 at the California Institute of Technology. His advisors were Linus Pauling and J. Holmes Sturdivant.

#6724

Walther F. Goebel

1899 - 1993 (94 years)

Walther Frederick Goebel was an American immunologist and an organic chemist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Goebel was known for his research of polysaccharides. Awards and distinctions member of the National Academy of Scienceshonorary degrees from Rockefeller University in 1978 and Middlebury College in 1959

#6725

Luis Federico Leloir

Luis Federico Leloir

1906 - 1987 (81 years)

Luis Federico Leloir was an Argentine physician and biochemist who received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the metabolic pathways by which carbohydrates are synthesized and converted into energy in the body. Although born in France, Leloir received the majority of his education at the University of Buenos Aires and was director of the private research group Fundación Instituto Campomar until his death in 1987. His research into sugar nucleotides, carbohydrate metabolism, and renal hypertension garnered international attention and led to significant progress in understanding, diagnosing and treating the congenital disease galactosemia.

#6726

J. R. Partington

1886 - 1965 (79 years)

James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry , for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.

#6727

Otto Redlich

1896 - 1978 (82 years)

Otto Redlich was an Austrian physical chemist who is best known for his development of equations of state like Redlich-Kwong equation. Besides this he had numerous other contributions to science. He won the Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1932.

#6728

Hans Erlenmeyer

1900 - 1967 (67 years)

Hans Friedrich Albrecht Erlenmeyer was a German-Swiss chemist and collector of antiquities. He was a professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Basel. Life and career Hans Erlenmeyer came from a family of chemists; his grandfather Emil Erlenmeyer and his father Emil Erlenmeyer Jr. were both chemistry professors. Erlenmeyer studied chemistry from 1918 to 1922 at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1922 with a thesis entitled "On Asymmetric Synthesis". He worked as an assistant to Bernhard Lepsius. In 192...

#6729

Philip J. Elving

1913 - 1984 (71 years)

Philip Juliber Elving was a chemist who served on the faculty of Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, and most notably the University of Michigan, where he was the Hobart Willard Professor of Chemistry. He retired from Michigan, assuming professor emeritus status, in 1983. His research was primarily in analytical chemistry, a subject he also taught for many years at Michigan. Along with I. M. Kolthoff and J. D. Winefordner, he co-edited two popular series of monographs on analytical chemistry.

#6730

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.

#6731

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.

#6732

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.

#6733

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.

#6734

Robert J. Linhardt

Robert J. Linhardt

Robert J. Linhardt is the Ann and John Broadbent, Jr. '59 Senior Constellation Professor Biocatalysis & Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His primary appointment at RPI is based in the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, consisting of joint appointments with the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Department of Biology, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center. He is highly cited in his field, with over 100 papers having each over 100 citations.

#6735

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.

#6736

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.

#6737

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.

#6738

Evert Verwey

1905 - 1981 (76 years)

Evert Johannes Willem Verwey, also Verweij, was a Dutch chemist, who also did research in physical chemistry. Verwey studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam and obtained his MSc in 1929. From 1931 he worked as an assistant at the University of Groningen, where he obtained his PhD under the guidance of Hugo Rudolph Kruyt . In 1934 he moved to the Philips Laboratories in Eindhoven. He continued work on colloids, which was also the topic of his dissertation, and on oxides. The Verwey transition in magnetite is named after him.

#6739

Raymond Thayer Birge

1887 - 1980 (93 years)

Raymond Thayer Birge was an American physicist. Career Born in Brooklyn, New York, into an academic scientific family, Birge obtained his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1913. In the same year he married Irene A. Walsh. The Birges had two children, Carolyn Elizabeth and Robert Walsh, Associate Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1973-1981. After five years as an instructor at Syracuse University, he became a member of the physics department at University of California, Berkeley, where he remained until he retired, as chairman, in 1955.

#6740

N. Howell Furman

1892 - 1965 (73 years)

Nathaniel Howell Furman was an American professor of analytical chemistry who helped develop the electrochemical uranium separation process as a member of the Manhattan Project. Background and career Furman was born in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey in 1892. He attended Lawrenceville School, where he was a model student, graduating with a Master's Prize from his high school in 1909. He enrolled in Princeton University, where he received Phi Beta Kappa honors and graduated in 1913. He received an M.S. in 1915 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1917. Furman served in World War I in the Army Chemical Warfare Service.

#6741

Samuel C. Lind

1879 - 1965 (86 years)

Samuel Colville Lind was a radiation chemist, referred to as "the father of modern radiation chemistry". He gained his B.A in 1899 at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia. After a short spell at MIT he moved to study chemistry at Leipzig University in Germany, carrying out research into the kinetics of chemical reactions, where he was awarded a Ph.D in 1905. He then returned to work at the University of Michigan until 1913, studying the chemical reactions induced by ionizing radiation. From 1913 to 1925 he worked at the US Bureau of Mines, concerned with extraction of radium from carnotite ore.

#6742

Robert Thomas Sanderson

1912 - 1989 (77 years)

Robert Thomas Sanderson was an American inorganic chemist, more commonly known by the initials "R.T." found in his papers. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago for his research in boron chemistry. After working in Texaco's research lab, he became a professor and spent his career on the faculties of the University of Florida, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. He also created a company supplying safety posters and lab-related artwork of his own design, and published several books including Vacuum Manipulation of Volatile Compounds.

#6743

Otto Hahn

1879 - 1968 (89 years)

Otto Hahn was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and father of nuclear fission. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered radioactive isotopes of radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Nuclear fission was the basis for nuclear reactors and nuclear w...

#6744

Vladimir Ipatieff

Vladimir Ipatieff

1867 - 1952 (85 years)

Vladimir Nikolayevich Ipatieff ; was a Russian and American chemist. His most important contributions are in the field of petroleum chemistry and catalysts. Life and career Born in Moscow, Ipatieff first studied artillery in the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy in Petersburg, then later studied chemistry in Russia with Alexei Yevgrafovich Favorskii and in Germany. The prominence of his extended family is illustrated by the fact that the July 17, 1918, extermination of Czar Nicholas Romanoff, the Empress and the rest of the royal family took place in the basement of a vacation house owned by the Ipatieff family in Ekaterinburg.

#6745

Frederick Soddy

Frederick Soddy

1877 - 1956 (79 years)

Frederick Soddy FRS was an English radiochemist who explained, with Ernest Rutherford, that radioactivity is due to the transmutation of elements, now known to involve nuclear reactions. He also proved the existence of isotopes of certain radioactive elements. In 1921 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes". Soddy was a polymath who mastered chemistry, nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, finance and economics.

#6746

Pehr Victor Edman

Pehr Victor Edman

1916 - 1977 (61 years)

Pehr Victor Edman was a Swedish biochemist. He developed a method for sequencing proteins; the Edman degradation. Early life Edman was born in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1935 he started studying medicine at Karolinska Institutet, where he became interested in basic research and received a bachelor in medicine in 1938. His research was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, where he was drafted to serve in the Swedish army. He returned to the Karolinska Institutet where he earned his doctoral degree under advice from Professor Erik Jorpes in 1946.

#6747

Calvin Adam Buehler

Calvin Adam Buehler

1896 - 1988 (92 years)

Calvin Adam Buehler was an American organic chemist and professor at the University of Tennessee from 1922 to 1965. He served as the Chemistry Department Head from 1940-1962, during which time he established the first chemistry doctoral program at the University of Tennessee. The chemistry building at the University of Tennessee is named Buehler Hall in his honor.

#6748

Peter Joseph Moloney

1891 - 1989 (98 years)

Peter Joseph Moloney was a Canadian chemist. He is known for his work on developing vaccines against diphtheria and tetanus, purifying insulin preparations for clinical use, demonstrating antibodies against insulin in humans and animals, and developing sulfated insulin preparationss for the treatment of diabetics with insulin resistance. He also invented a quick-acting pH electrode and helped to develop an antiserum that was used in WW II for protection against gas gangrene.

#6749

Victor Goldschmidt

Victor Goldschmidt

1888 - 1947 (59 years)

Victor Moritz Goldschmidt was a Norwegian mineralogist considered to be the founder of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry, developer of the Goldschmidt Classification of elements. Early life and education Goldschmidt was born in Zürich, Switzerland on 27 January 1888. His father, Heinrich Jacob Goldschmidt, was a physical chemist at the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum and his mother, Amelie Koehne , was the daughter of a lumber merchant. They named him Viktor after a colleague of Heinrich, Victor Meyer. His father's family was Jewish back to at least 1600 and mostly highly educated, with rabbis, judges, lawyers and military officers among their numbers.

#6750

Rutherford John Gettens

1900 - 1974 (74 years)

Rutherford John Gettens was a chemist and pioneering conservation scientist. Born to Daniel and Clara Gettens, Rutherford John Gettens grew up in Mooers, New York, where he became valedictorian of his high school class in 1918. He received his B.S. from Middlebury College in 1923. On graduating, he taught chemistry at Colby College, Maine, before receiving his M.A. from Harvard University in 1929.

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