The History of Chemistry

This episode concerns chemical societies: their history and value. We hear of the first scientific society in Rome, the slow spread of scientific societies, and the controversy over what was the first chemical society: in America, Scotland, or England? We learn of the first permanent chemical society, the Chemical Society of London, and its descendants, which now span the world. We hear of the rea...

In this episode, we talk about the mostly-forgotten OTHER nucleic acid, RNA, and the history of its discovery. Along the way we encounter Jean Brachet, who discovered the first physiological difference from DNA: it was in the cell cytoplasm. Soon thereafter, Nazi-funded Joachim Hämmerling found that the cell nucleus had genetic information, which ruled out RNA. We take a curve into the new informa...

This episode brings us up to almost the creation of environmental chemistry. The first part tells of the 1947 explosion of the S.S. Grandcamp in Texas City, USA, and the contributory factors, plus the horrendous damage to the entire bay and nearby cities. The second is how Arie Haagen-Smit discovered the cause of Los Angeles smog in the early 1950s, and what efforts were made before and after his...

This episode is devoted to plastics invented or commercialized in the 1950s. Our first stop is carbon fibers, which started with Joseph Swan in the 19th century, but came of age in the late 1950s with Roger Bacon. Polyurethanes were finally commercialized in the early 1950s by B.F. Goodrich and Baeyer. Polyimides, though invented in 1908, weren't sold as products till the DuPont version, Kapt...

We hear about the age of discovery of hormones and antibiotics, from the 1930s to the 1950s. Russell Marker left Penn State to find a plant from which to synthesize progesterone, so we learn about the trials and tribulations of the Mexican firm Syntex. Carl Djerassi joined Syntex and invented norethindrone. We learn of more fungal- and bacterial-based antibiotics, from streptomycin to tetracycline...

We focus on the Group 4 elements: carbon (as an inorganic element), silicon, germanium--and a teeny bit about tin. We hear of the new mineral moissanite and Henri Moissan, about the race to synthesize diamonds with Tracy Hall, the weird properties of semiconductors found in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the first semiconductor device by Jagdish Chandra Bose, and quantum-mechanical explanation...

This episode is about the practical changes that appeared during the middle of the 20th century in chemistry laboratories. These are infrared spectrometers, pH meters, visible-ultraviolet spectrophotometers, mass spectrometers, nuclear magnetic resonance instruments, and chromatographs. All of these electronic instruments made the laboratory of the 1960s a most different place than the laboratory...

This episode discusses the mid-20th-century discovery of the structure of proteins. We discuss Mikhail Tsvet's invention of chromatography and Frederick Sanger's revealing of the specific sequence of amino acids in proteins. Then we hear of Vincent du Vigneaud's synthesis of oxytocin and vasopressin, both small proteins. Max Perutz's work on adding heavy metals to proteins to g...

We look at the progress organic chemist Robert Woodward achieved in the 20th century in organic synthesis, that is, creating from scratch all sorts of natural products. His first success was during World War II in synthesizing quinine. Then he was able to create strychnine, cholesterol, cortisone, lysergic acid, reserpine, chlorophyll, cephalosporin, and colchicine. These syntheses took a dozen to...

We learn about developments in 20th-century theoretical inorganic chemistry, starting with coordination complexes as explained by Christian Blomstrand, Sophus Jørgensen, and Alfred Werner. Theory from a quantum-chemical perspective began with Jean Becquerel and Hans Bethe and "Crystal Field Theory." We then look at John Griffith and Leslie Orgel's "Ligand Field Theory." Fr...

As a celebratory episode, reaching number 50 in this podcast, we talk about the history of DNA, from its discovery by Dr. Friedrich Miescher in the 1860s, to the race to uncover its correct structure in 1953, between the Great and Powerful Linus Pauling, and the less-great and certainly non-powerful James Watson and Francis Crick. Along the way, we learn of the fits and starts in figuring out what...

In which we hear about 19th-century observations on the heat-capacity of gases, starting with Eunice Foot in 1856 and John Tyndall a few years later. Then we get to the first mathematical modeling of Earth's climate and how concentration of certain gases affects the climate, as done by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. Then we change to leaded gasoline in the 1920s, as promoted by General Motors and...

Once chemists realized that Staudinger was right, that molecules could be huge, protein research zoomed ahead. We hear of Gilbert Adair's study of hemoglobin, of the battle James Sumner had over the crystallization of urease with Richard Willstätter, and then the huge research William Astbury did on various keratin structures. Linus Pauling enters our story with his amazing work on the alpha-...

This episode is devoted to "spectroscopy," when you toss light at a sample and see how the sample responds. We talk of infrared spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, far-infrared spectroscopy, and microwaves. All of these types of light affect molecules--in different ways--and we learn how, and who was instrumental in developing each type. Support the show Support my podcast at...

Here we start with more polymers popularized in the 1920s through the 1940s and beyond: polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, invented by accident in 1835 by Henri Regnault but made practical by Waldo Semon nearly a century later; polyethylene (polythene), invented by Hans von Pechmann, but commercialized by the mid- to late 1930s by ICI employees Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson; high-density polyethylene...

Here we talk about mechanisms of organic reactions, that is, a physical model describing how particular organic molecules collide, interact, and react. The first chemist to discuss this in a modern way was Arthur Lapworth. We move to Robert Robinson, Arthur Michael, and then Irving Langmuir. Finally the current idea of a reaction mechanism was given by Christopher Ingold in the 1920s and 1930s. We...

Today we examine the element fluorine and some ways it affected 20th-century chemistry. The first person to isolate the element was Henri Moissan in 1886, succeeding after many others failed, often with dangerous results. We talk about why fluorine is so reactive. Then we talk of Thomas Midgely's work at General Motors to invent the stable, non-toxic refrigerant Freon. We move to Roy Plunkett...

Here we learn about how scientists in the early 20th Century gradually became able to create isotopes, convert transmute elements from one to another, and eventually the invention of new, artificial isotopes not found in nature, such as phosphorus-31. We hear of tritium and carbon-14. Then we get to George Hevesy and his idea of radioactive tracing, including a prank he pulled on his landlady. Fin...

By the late 1920s, scientists realized that electrons cannot be precisely located around atoms. The best we can do is describe the shape of the probability volume electrons take around atoms. Linus Pauling in the 1930s then took these shapes, and used to them to describe electrons' probability shapes around whole molecules with valence bond theory, explaining why molecules have the shapes the...

Before environmental chemistry, there were definitely observations about Earth's environment and the part chemistry played. We start with Joseph Priestley and Jan Ingenhousz's observations on how plants and animals add to or remove oxygen from the air, and exchange the oxygen with carbon dioxide, in the 1770s. We then look at Théodore de Saussure, Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart, Jacques-Jos...

In this episode, we look at the rise of the Age of Plastics, with polymers from the 1920s and 1930s. We start with urea-formaldehyde resin from 1919, but before the true nature of polymers was clarified. We hear of Hermann Staudinger, who promoted the idea of macromolecules in the 1920s against significant resistance from European chemists. Thé Svedberg's ultracentrifuge gave credence to macr...

We examine the first "chemical war," The Great War, or World War I, and its aftermath, and what made it so. Chlorine gas, phosgene gas, mustard gas, and Lewisite were the products of this era. We also discuss the chemical and political career of Chaim Weizmann, the "father of industrial fermentation," and the checkered history of Fritz Haber. Two decades after the Great War, th...

This episode introduces isotopes, first understood by Frederick Soddy, while studying decays of radioactive elements. Then we look at half-lives of elements, first calculated by Ernest Rutherford. This led to the first reasonable age of the Earth, calculated by Bertram Boltwood. Soddy and Kasimir Fajans independently figure out what happens to isotopes vis-a-vis the periodic table. Stefanie Horovi...

We take a break from chemical observations and theory, and switch to practice. That is, we learn about the origins of the chemical laboratory in the Renaissance, and track its development up through the early 20th century. We see the switch from furnaces to gas lines for individual heating apparatuses. We see the start of ventilation, and the differentiation of experimental, lecture, and teaching...

Here we talk a bit about the history of petroleum from ancient days to modernity. Among the moderns we hear of are Abraham Gesner, promoter of kerosene; Samuel Kier, huckster, canal-boat owner, and refiner; and Edwin Drake's well that ushered in the modern oil industry. We discuss fractional distillation of petroleum to isolate the various components, octane rating for fuels, and various inte...