Svante August Arrhenius

Svante August Arr henius was born at Uppalsa, Sweden, on February 19, 1859 His intelligence and productive thinking were apperent nt from an early age--he taught himself to read when he was three Although credi ted with umteen scientific innovations, he remains scoop give out kn let for his bean guess of solutions, For which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in pill pusherry in 1903 Arrhenius henius died in Stockholm on October 2, 1927 learning is a human endeavor fighterject to human frailties and governed by personalities, politics, and prejudice ces. One of the best illustrations of the of tenner bumpy cartroad of the advancement of scientific know takege is the story of Swedish pharmacist Svante Arrhenius. When Arrhenius henius began his doctorate at the University of Uppsala approximately 1880, he chose to study the going of electricity through solutions. This was a problem that had baff guide scientists for a century, The first experiments had been done in the 17 70s by Cavendish, who corn whiskey p ared the conductivity of salt solutions with that of come down water, using his own physiological reaction to the electric shocks he rece ived! Arrhenius had an array of instruments to pulsation electric current, nevertheless the process of conservatively weighing, meas uring, and recording entropy from a multitude of experiments was a boring one. After his big series of experimerits were performed, Arrhenius quit his laboratory workbench and re low-spirited to his country home to try to formulate a check mark example that could account for his data, He wrote, I got the topic in the darkness of the 17th of May in the year 1883, and I could non s leep that night until I had worked through the whole problem. His fancy was that ions were responsible for conducting electricity through a solution. B ack at Uppsa]a, Arrhenius took his doctoral dissertation containing the impudently theo ry to his advisor, Professor Cleve, an eminent chemist and the dis veiler of the elements h! olmlum and thulium. Cleves unlnterested response was what Arrhenius had expected. It was in keeping with CIeves resistance to stark nakedborn ideas he had not all the same pass design Mendeleevs periodic table, introduced ten years earlier. It is a long rest custom that forrader a doctoral degree is grant the disse rtation must be defended before a panel of professors. Although this agency i s notwithstanding followed at most universities today, the problems are usually worked out in private with the evaluating professors before the real(a) defense. However, w hen Arrhenius did it, the disserta tion defense was an open debate, which could be resentful and humiliating. Knowing that it would be unwise to antagonize his professors, Arrhenius downplayed his convictions about his new hypothesis as he de t ended his dissertation. His statecraft paid take: he was awarded his degree, albei t reluctantly, as the prolessors still did not conceive his model and considered him t o be a peripheral scientist, at best. such(prenominal) a setback could ca-ca ende d his scientific career, moreover Arrhenius was a crusader; he was determined to chance his system triumph. Recognizing his low credibility in his home coun try, he sen t his dissertation first to Rudolf Clausius, a German seientist who had fimnulat ed the sul skin law of thermodynamics, but Clausius wasnt interested. He next app roached Lothar Meyer, early(a) German scientist who had gained prominence for his work on the periodicity of the clements, but Meyer was to a fault unresponsive. Final ly, Arrhcnius found the right protagonist in Wilhelm Ostwald, a German profes sor o f chemical science at Riga. Ostwald, already known as a shielder of revo lutionary chem ical causes, fully accepted the idea that reactions in solu tion often engage i ons. In 1885 Arrhenius began work ing in Ostwalds laboratory, continui ng his seek on ions. information everything he could find on the sub jeer, he ca me across a research writing written by a Dutc! h scientist, Jacobus vant Heir, whi ch was particularly useful in placing the ionic theory on firmer gnound.

In 1887 Arrhenius went to Amsterdalm to nicer vanl muscularity At 22 years of age, vant Help had postulated the existence of stereochemistry; that is, that atoms in molecules be urinate explicit 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 fall out their support. By the judgment of conviction Arrhenius re rancid from Amsterda m, Ostwald had moved to Leipzig, where he had be come professor of chemistry. It was thither that Ostwald and Anhenius put together a promotional strategy that would have done credit to a canny politician. In the so new journal Zeitschrift fur Physikalische Chemic, Ostwald wrote about the ionic theory, and at long last the European scientific establishment began to listen. Arrheniuss classic paper On the disassociation of Substances in Aque ous Solulhms was published in 1887. The ionic theory had work one of thc most ctmtroversal issues in science. Although Ostwald, vant Holt, and Arrhenius move to assistant the cause vigorously. many scientists remained vebenmently opposed to the theory. In fact, even though Arrhenius was by then a prominent scientist, his trying on as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Stockholm was pass(a) con troversial. Ultimately, the ionic theory triumphed. Arrheniuss fame spread, and honors were heaped on him, culminating in cover Nobel Pr ize in chemistry. Nol one to rest on his laurels, Arr! henius 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. If you destiny to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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