Top 5 husband and wife chemists excluding Curie

1) Heinz Hunsdiecker and Clare Hunsdiecker

Published :Über den Abbau der Salze aliphatischer Säuren durch Brom (Chem. Ber. 1942, 75, 291). We should call it the Hunsdiecker-Hunsdiecker reaction.


2) Fritz Haber and Clara Haber

Clara shot herself in 1915 because she did not like the chemistry he did in those days.

3) Louis Fieser and Mary Fieser

4) Walter Noddack and Ida Noddack

5) Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and Marie Anne Lavoisier

Fractioning columns II

Snyder is identified! (see previous post)

In a paper the inventor is mentioned; E.O. Snyder of the Barret company. (Laboratory Fractionating Columns; Ind. Eng. Chem. 1927, 19, 379)

The paper contains this drawing of columns.

Great, more work to do.


Wurtz column - Charles Adolphe Wurtz (that was easy)

Henninger-Le Bel column - J.A. Le Bel and Arthur Henninger (Henninger is mentioned here)

Glinsky column and Young column (often referred to as a Young and Thomas column) are not identified yet.

In Ind. Eng. Chem. Anal. Ed. 1931, 3, 377 a few other columns are mentioned. Brunn, Brown, Taylor.... Even more work to do.

Taylor column - Hugh S. Taylor

Catalytic Dehydration of C6-C8 Aliphatic Alcohols; J. Am. Chem. Soc, 1939, 61, 1751

Brunn column - Johannes H. Brunn

Laboratory Rectifying Columns with Non-Siphoning Bubbling-Cap Plates; Ind. Eng. Chem. Anal. Ed, 1929, 1, 212

We hope to find Brown some day.

Fractioning columns

Named condensers were done, and Vigreux was identified. Now it is time for us to spend some time on other named fractioning columns.

Dufton column - Samuel Felix Dufton (1867–1943)

Hempel column - Walther Mathias Hempel (1851-1916)

Holzman column - George Holzman
Distillation Equipment Suitable for Centigram and Decigram Quantities; Anal. Chem. 1948, 20, 361

Stedman column - Donald Frank Stedman (1900-1967)

Column with special packing, used for industrial distillation.GB451014
US2227164

Widmer column - Gustav Widmer Über die fraktionierte Destillation kleiner Substanzmengen; Helv. Chim. Act. 1924, 7, 59

Oldershaw column - C.F. Oldershaw

Perforated Plate Columns for Analytical Batch Distillations; Ind. Eng. Chem. Anal. Ed. 1941, 265

Snyder Column - not yet identified

Friedrichs condenser in wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_condenser

Top 5 hair loss chemists

1) August Wilhelm von Hoffmann


2) Fritz Haber


3) Ira Remsen

Notice the nice 'only on the cheeks moustache-design'.

4) Linus Pauling

5) Hermann Staudinger

You may have noticed that the author is now called 'Synthetic Environment'. Een of andere vent is giving input for post ideas now so we decided to use just one author. (Well, there are people who think there is just one author.)

Een of andere vent: Congratulations with your offspring!

Top 5 chemical warfare chemists

1) Fritz Haber (1868-1934)
'The father of chemical warfare', Haber, initiated the use of poison gasses like chlorine in WWI. In the Second Battle of Ypres Germany deployed 180 tonnes of chlorine to kill Canadian and British troops. Fritz Haber developed Zyklon B as well, an agent that would later kill many members of his family. Haber's wife disliked Haber's warfare research and this was supposedly the reason she commited suicide.

2) Victor Grignard (1871-1935)
During WWI Grignard was Haber's counterpart. Working in Paris on the manufacture of phosgene for use as poison gas. Haber combined chlorine and phosgene to get an even more effective poison.

3) Alfred Nobel (1833-1896)
Nobel invented dynamite for the mining industry and filed a patent (US78317) in 1868. It made him very rich. The substance had some off-label use in various wars.

4) Gerhard Schrader (1903-1990)
'Father of the nerve agents'
Co)inventor of nerve agents like Tabun, Sarin, Soman and Cyclosarin. The most famous agent, sarin, was used by Iraq against Iran in the 1980-88 war.

5) Louis Fieser (1899-1977)

Invented formula for napalm for millitary use in 1943. Produced by Dow Chemical in WWII. Napalm is well known because of use in the Vietnam war by the USA.

Lovely stamps, wonderful stamps

When you have two Nobel prizes, what else would you like?

How about at least 59 stamps!

Turkey, France, Senegal, Poland, India
St Helena, Ireland, Poland, Monaco, Soviet Union, Afars and Issas
Somalia, Poland, North Korea, Central Africa, Malagasy
Belgium, Congo, Central Africa, Sweden, Mali
Turkey, Moldavia, Djibouti, Suriname, Cuba, Poland
Barbuda, Poland, Poland, Poland, DDR, San Marino
Sharjah, North Korea, Albania, Guinea, Palau, Congo, Turkey
Liberia, Nicaragua, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Afghanistan, Cuba
Togo, Indochina, Panama, Poland, Monaco, Monaco
Tchad, Angola, Monaco, Afghanistan, Afghanistan
Somalia

Top 5 materials chemists they like

Check out Carbon-based Curiosities for the Top 5 materials chemists we like. A nice list with living chemists only.

Top 5 suicide chemists

1) Emil Fischer (1852-1919)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1902.
His son Walther commited suicide in 1915 and another son Alfred died of typhoid fever in 1917.
Suffering from intestinal carcinoma, pain resulting from his excessive exposure to phenylhydrazine and the loss of his sons in WWI, he committed suicide in 1919 (anybody who knows how?). Before he took his life he finalized his testament and submitted his last two papers for publication (Hoppe-Seylers Z. Physiol. Chem. 1919, 107, 176-202. and Hoppe-Seylers Z. Physiol. Chem. 1919, 108, 3-8. A nice biography can be found here (Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2002, 24, 4095).

2) Hans Fischer (1881-1945)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1930.
He committed suicide on 31 March 1945 in Munich after his institute and his work were destroyed in an Allied bombing raid during the last days of World War II.

3) George R. Price (1922-1975)
Physical chemist, population geneticist and science journalist. He started his career as an instructor in chemistry at Harvard University. He dedicated his later life to helping the homeless. He committed suicide by cutting his throat with a pair of nail scissors. Friends said he committed suicide because of despondency over his inability to continue helping the homeless.

4) Nicolas Leblanc (1742-1806)
French chemist developed a process for making sodium carbonate from sodium chloride. The Revolutionary government seized his patent and factory in 1794. The factory was handed back to him by Napoleon in 1802 but he didn't have the money to get back in production. A broken and depressed man, Leblanc used a gun to kill himself.

5) Harold Watkins
Sulfanilamide, a drug used to treat streptococcal infections was used as tablet and as an injectable. To market the drug for children and patients who preferred to take their medications in liquid forms, the chief chemist of S.E. Massengill Co. Harold cole Watkins tried to find a way to liquefy the drug. He discovered the drug dissolved in diethylene glycol. Without testing the drug 1300 bottles were distributed. 107 people died. This incident was the impetus for the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938.

After this '1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide Incident' Watkins shot himself. (Some say it was an accidental shot while cleaning his gun.)

Top 5 chemists with presidents/kings/emperors and what they said

1) Emil Fischer to Kaiser Wilhelm II
2) Robert Grubbs and Richard Schrock to George Bush

3) John Fenn to King Carl XIV Gustaf

4) Linus Pauling to Gerald Ford

5) Margaret Thatcher to Ronald Reagan

Carbon Tet

Carbon Tet, I am wondering what this blog will do.

what they said; Pauling & Fleming

What's all that stuff on Sir Alexander Fleming desk?

Why is Linus demonstrating?