By 1000 BC, the ancient civilizations were using technologies that would form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Extracting metal from their ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, making pigments for cosmetics and painting, extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume, making cheese, dying cloth, tanning leather, rendering fat into soap, making glass, and making alloys like bronze.
Philosophical attempts to explain the nature of matter and its transformations failed. The protoscience of
alchemy also failed, but by experimentation and recording the results set the stage for science. Modern chemistry begins to emerge when a clear distinction is made between chemistry and alchemy by
Robert Boyle in his work
The Sceptical Chymist (1661). Chemistry then becomes a full-fledged science when
Antoine Lavoisier develops his law of
conservation of mass, which demands careful measurements and quantitative observations of chemical phenomena. So, while both alchemy and chemistry are concerned with the nature of matter and its transformations, it is only the
chemists who apply the
scientific method. The history of chemistry is intertwined with the
history of thermodynamics, especially through the work of
Willard Gibbs.
[1]From fire to atomism
Arguably the first chemical reaction that was used in a controlled manner by mankind was
fire. However, for millennia, in absence of a scientific understanding,
fire was simply a mystical force that could transform one substance into another (burn the wood, or boil the water) while producing heat and light. Fire affected many aspects of early societies, ranging from the most simple facets of everyday life, such as cooking and habitat lighting, to more advanced technologies, such as pottery, bricks, and smelting of metals to make tools.
Philosophical attempts to rationalize why different substances have different properties (color, density, smell), exist in different states (gaseous, liquid, and solid), and react in a different manner when exposed to environments, for example to water or fire or temperature changes, led ancient philosophers to postulate the first theories on nature and chemistry. The history of such philosophical theories that relate to chemistry, can probably be traced back to every single ancient civilization. The common aspect in all these theories was the attempt to identify a small number of primary
elements that make up all the various substances in nature. Substances like air, water, and soil/earth, energy forms, such as fire and light, and more abstract concepts such as ideas, aether, and heaven, were common in ancient civilizations even in absence of any cross-fertilization; for example in Greek, Indian, Mayan, and ancient Chinese philosophies all considered air, water, earth and fire as
primary elements.[
citation needed]
Atomism can be traced back to
ancient Greece and
ancient India.
[2] Greek atomism dates back to 440 BC, as what might be indicated by the book De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things)
[3] written by the Roman
Lucretius[4] in 50 BC. In the book was found ideas traced back to
Democritus and
Leucippus, who declared that atoms were the most indivisible part of matter. This coincided with a similar declaration by
Indian philosopher
Kanada in his
Vaisheshika sutras around the same time period.
[2] By similar means discussed the existence of
gases. What Kanada declared by sutra, Democritus declared by philosophical musing. Both suffered from a lack of
empirical data. Without scientific proof, the existence of atoms was easy to deny.
Aristotle opposed the existence of atoms in 330 BC; and the atomism of the Vaisheshika school was also opposed for a long time.[
citation needed]
Much of the early development of purification methods is described by
Pliny the Elder in his
Naturalis Historia. He made attempts to explain those methods, as well as making acute observations of the state of many minerals.
[
edit] The rise of metallurgy
Main articles:
History of ferrous metallurgy and
History of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinentIt was fire that led to the discovery of
glass and the
purification of
metals which in turn gave way to the rise of
metallurgy.[
citation needed] During the early stages of metallurgy, methods of purification of metals were sought, and
gold, known in
ancient Egypt as early as 2600 BC, became a precious metal. The discovery of
alloys heralded the
Bronze Age. After the Bronze Age, the history of metallurgy was marked by which army had better weaponry. Countries in
Eurasia had their heyday when they made the superior alloys, which, in turn, made better armour and better weapons. This often determined the outcomes of battles.[
citation needed] Significant progress in metallurgy and alchemy was made in
ancient India.
[5][
edit] The philosopher's stone and the rise of alchemy
Main article:
Alchemy"Renel the Alchemist", by Sir William Douglas, 1853
Many people were interested in finding a method that could convert cheaper metals into gold. The material that would help them do this was rumored to exist in what was called the
philosopher's stone. This led to the
protoscience called
alchemy. Alchemy was practiced by many cultures throughout history and often contained a mixture of philosophy, mysticism, and protoscience.[
citation needed]
Alchemy not only sought to turn base metals into gold, but especially in a Europe rocked by
bubonic plague, there was hope that alchemy would lead to the development of medicines to improve people's health. The
holy grail of this strain of alchemy was in the attempts made at finding the
elixir of life, which promised eternal youth. Neither the elixir nor the philosopher's stone were ever found. Also, characteristic of alchemists was the belief that there was in the air an "ether" which breathed life into living things.[
citation needed] Practitioners of alchemy included
Isaac Newton, who remained one throughout his life.
[
edit] Problems encountered with alchemy
There were several problems with alchemy, as seen from today's standpoint. There was no systematic naming system for new compounds, and the language was esoteric and vague to the point that the terminologies meant different things to different people. In fact, according to The Fontana History of Chemistry (Brock, 1992):
The language of alchemy soon developed an arcane and secretive technical vocabulary designed to conceal information from the uninitiated. To a large degree, this language is incomprehensible to us today, though it is apparent that readers of
Geoffery Chaucer's
Canon's Yeoman's Tale or audiences of
Ben Jonson's
The Alchemist were able to construe it sufficiently to laugh at it.
[6]Chaucer's tale exposed the more fraudulent side of alchemy, especially the manufacture of counterfeit gold from cheap substances. Soon after Chaucer,
Dante Alighieri also demonstrated an awareness of this fraudulence, causing him to consign all alchemists to the
Inferno in his writings. Soon after, in 1317, the
Avignon Pope John XXII ordered all alchemists to leave France for making counterfeit money. A law was passed in England in 1403 which made the "multiplication of metals" punishable by death. Despite these and other apparently extreme measures, alchemy did not die. Royalty and privileged classes still sought to discover the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life for themselves.
[7]There was also no agreed-upon scientific method for making experiments reproducible. Indeed many alchemists included in their methods irrelevant information such as the timing of the tides or the phases of the moon. The esoteric nature and codified vocabulary of alchemy appeared to be more useful in concealing the fact that they could not be sure of very much at all. As early as the 14th century, cracks seemed to grow in the facade of alchemy; and people became sceptical.[
citation needed] Clearly, there needed to be a scientific method where experiments can be repeated by other people, and results needed to be reported in a clear language that laid out both what is known and unknown.
[
edit] From alchemy to chemistry
[
edit] Early chemists
See also:
Timeline of chemistry and
Alchemy and chemistry in IslamJabir ibn Hayyan (Geber), an
Arabic alchemist whose experimental research laid the foundations for chemistry.
In the Arab world, the Muslims were translating the works of the
ancient Greeks into Arabic and were experimenting with scientific ideas.
[8] The development of the modern
scientific method was slow and arduous, but an early scientific method for chemistry began emerging among early
Muslim chemists, beginning with the 9th century chemist
Jabir ibn Hayyan (known as "Geber" in Europe), who is "considered by many to be the father of chemistry".
[9][10][11][12] He introduced a systematic and
experimental approach to scientific research based in the
laboratory, in contrast to the ancient
Greek and
Egyptian alchemists whose works were often allegorical and unintelligble.
[13] He also invented and named the
alembic (al-anbiq), chemically analyzed many
chemical substances, composed
lapidaries, distinguished between
alkalis and
acids, and manufactured hundreds of
drugs.
[14]Among other influential Muslim chemists,
Ja'far al-Sadiq,
[15] Alkindus,
[16] Abū al-Rayhān al-Bīrūnī,
[17] Avicenna[18] and
Ibn Khaldun refuted the practice of alchemy and the theory of the
transmutation of metals; and
Tusi described an early version of the
conservation of mass, noting that a body of
matter is able to change but is not able to disappear.
[19] Rhazes refuted
Aristotle's theory of four
classical elements for the first time and set up the firm foundations of modern chemistry, using the laboratory in the modern sense, designing and describing more than twenty instruments, many parts of which are still in use today, such as a crucible, decensory, cucurbit or retort for distillation, and the head of a still with a delivery tube (ambiq, Latin alembic), and various types of furnace or stove.
[20]Agricola, author of De re metallica
For the more honest practitioners in Europe, alchemy became an intellectual pursuit after early Arabic alchemy became available through
Latin translation, and over time, they got better at it.
Paracelsus (1493-1541), for example, rejected the 4-elemental theory and with only a vague understanding of his chemicals and medicines, formed a hybrid of alchemy and science in what was to be called
iatrochemistry. Paracelsus was not perfect in making his experiments truly scientific. For example, as an extension of his theory that new compounds could be made by combining mercury with sulfur, he once made what he thought was "oil of sulfur". This was actually
dimethyl ether, which had neither mercury nor sulfur.[
citation needed]
Practical attempts to improve the refining of ores and their extraction to smelt metals was an important source of information for early chemists, among them
Georg Agricola (1494–1555), who published his great work
De re metallica in 1556. His approach removed the mysticism associated with the subject, creating the practical base upon which others could build. The work describes the many kinds of furnace used to smelt ore, and stimulated interest in minerals and their composition. It is no coincidence that he gives numerous references to the earlier author,
Pliny the Elder and his
Naturalis Historia.
In 1605,
Sir Francis Bacon published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, which contains a description of what would later be known as the
scientific method.
[21] In 1615
Jean Beguin publishes the
Tyrocinium Chymicum, an early chemistry textbook, and in it draws the first-ever
chemical equation.
[22]Robert Boyle, one of the co-founders of modern chemistry through his use of proper experimentation, which further separated chemistry from alchemy
Robert Boyle (1627–1691) is considered to have refined the modern scientific method for alchemy and to have separated chemistry further from alchemy.
[23] Robert Boyle was an atomist, but favoured the word corpuscle over atoms. He comments that the finest division of matter where the properties are retained is at the level of corpuscles.
Boyle was credited with the discovery of
Boyle's Law. He is also credited for his landmark publication
The Sceptical Chymist, where he attempts to develop an
atomic theory of matter, with no small degree of success. Despite all these advances, the person celebrated as the "
father of modern chemistry" is
Antoine Lavoisier who developed his law of
conservation of mass in 1789, also called Lavoisier's Law.
[24] With this, chemistry acquired a strict quantitative nature, allowing reliable predictions to be made.
In 1754,
Joseph Black isolated
carbon dioxide, which he called "fixed air".
[25] Carl Wilhelm Scheele and
Joseph Priestly independently isolated
oxygen, called by Priestly "dephlogisticated air" and Scheele "fire air".
[26][27]Joseph Proust proposed the
law of definite proportions, which states that elements always combine in small, whole number ratios to form compounds.
[28] In 1800,
Alessandro Volta devised the first
chemical battery, thereby founding the discipline of
electrochemistry.
[29] In 1803,
John Dalton proposed
Dalton's Law, which describes relationship between the components in a mixture of gases and the relative pressure each contributes to that of the overall mixture.
[30][
edit] Antoine Lavoisier
Portrait of Monsieur Lavoisier and his wife, by
Jacques-Louis DavidAlthough the archives of chemical research draw upon work from ancient
Babylonia,
Egypt, and especially the
Arabs and
Persians after
Islam, modern chemistry flourished from the time of
Antoine Lavoisier, who is regarded as the "
father of modern chemistry", particularly for his discovery of the law of
conservation of mass, and his refutation of the
phlogiston theory of
combustion in 1783. (Phlogiston was supposed to be an imponderable substance liberated by flammable materials in burning.)
Mikhail Lomonosov independently established a tradition of chemistry in
Russia in the 18th century.[
citation needed] Lomonosov also rejected the phlogiston theory, and anticipated the
kinetic theory of gases.[
citation needed] He regarded heat as a form of motion, and stated the idea of conservation of matter.
[
edit] The vitalism debate and organic chemistry
After the nature of combustion (see
oxygen) was settled, another dispute, about
vitalism and the essential distinction between organic and inorganic substances, was revolutionized by
Friedrich Wöhler's accidental synthesis of
urea from inorganic substances in 1828. Never before had an organic
compound been synthesized from inorganic material.[
citation needed] This opened a new research field in chemistry, and by the end of the 19th century, scientists were able to synthesize hundreds of organic compounds. The most important among them are
mauve,
magenta, and other synthetic
dyes, as well as the widely used drug
aspirin. The discovery of the artificial synthesis of urea contributed greatly to the theory of
isomerism, as the empirical chemical formulas for urea and ammonium cyanate can be expressed similarly.
[
edit] Disputes about atomism after Lavoisier
Bust of
John Dalton by
ChantreyThroughout the 19th century, chemistry was divided between those who followed the
atomic theory of
John Dalton and those who did not, such as
Wilhelm Ostwald and
Ernst Mach.
[31] Although such proponents of the atomic theory as
Amedeo Avogadro and
Ludwig Boltzmann made great advances in explaining the behavior of
gases, this dispute was not finally settled until
Jean Perrin's experimental investigation of
Einstein's atomic explanation of
Brownian motion in the first decade of the 20th century.
[31]Well before the dispute had been settled, many had already applied the concept of atomism to chemistry. A major example was the
ion theory of
Svante Arrhenius which anticipated ideas about atomic substructure that did not fully develop until the 20th century.
Michael Faraday was another early worker, whose major contribution to chemistry was
electrochemistry, in which (among other things) a certain quantity of electricity during
electrolysis or
electrodeposition of metals was shown to be associated with certain quantities of chemical elements, and fixed quantities of the elements therefore with each other, in specific ratios.[
citation needed] These findings, like those of Dalton's combining ratios, were early clues to the atomic nature of matter.
[
edit] The periodic table
Main article:
History of the periodic tableDmitri Mendeleev, responsible for the
periodic table.
For many decades, the list of known chemical elements had been
steadily increasing. A great breakthrough in making sense of this long list (as well as in understanding the internal structure of atoms as discussed below) was
Dmitri Mendeleev and
Lothar Meyer's development of the
periodic table, and particularly Mendeleev's use of it to predict the existence and the properties of
germanium,
gallium, and
scandium, which Mendeleev called
ekasilicon, ekaaluminium, and ekaboron respectively. Mendeleev made his prediction in 1870; gallium was discovered in 1875, and was found to have roughly the same properties that Mendeleev predicted for it.[
citation needed]
[
edit] The modern definition of chemistry
Classically, before the 20th century, chemistry was defined as the science of the nature of matter and its transformations. It was therefore clearly distinct from physics which was not concerned with such dramatic transformation of matter. Moreover, in contrast to physics, chemistry was not using much of mathematics. Even some were particularly reluctant to using mathematics within chemistry. For example,
Auguste Comte wrote in 1830:
Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry.... if mathematical analysis should ever hold a prominent place in chemistry -- an aberration which is happily almost impossible -- it would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science.
However, in the second part of the 19th century, the situation changed and
August Kekule wrote in 1867:
I rather expect that we shall someday find a mathematico-mechanical explanation for what we now call atoms which will render an account of their properties.
After the discovery by
Ernest Rutherford and
Niels Bohr of the atomic structure in 1912, and by
Marie and
Pierre Curie of
radioactivity, scientists had to change their viewpoint on the nature of matter. The experience acquired by chemists was no longer pertinent to the study of the whole nature of matter but only to aspects related to the
electron cloud surrounding the atomic
nuclei and the movement of the latter in the
electric field induced by the former (see
Born-Oppenheimer approximation). The range of chemistry was thus restricted to the nature of matter around us in conditions which are not too far from
standard conditions for temperature and pressure and in cases where the exposure to radiation is not too different from the natural
microwave,
visible or
UV radiations on Earth. Chemistry was therefore re-defined as the science of matter that deals with the composition, structure, and properties of substances and with the transformations that they undergo.[
citation needed] However the meaning of matter used here relates explicitly to substances made of atoms and molecules, disregarding the matter within the atomic nuclei and its nuclear reaction or matter within highly ionized plasmas. Nevertheless the field of chemistry is still, on our human scale, very broad and the claim that chemistry is everywhere is accurate.
[
edit] Quantum chemistry
Main article:
Quantum chemistrySome view the birth of quantum chemistry in the discovery of the
Schrödinger equation and its application to the
hydrogen atom in 1926.[
citation needed] However, the 1927 article of
Walter Heitler and
Fritz London[32] is often recognised as the first milestone in the history of quantum chemistry.
[33] This is the first application of
quantum mechanics to the diatomic
hydrogen molecule, and thus to the phenomenon of the
chemical bond. In the following years much progress was accomplished by
Edward Teller,
Robert S. Mulliken,
Max Born,
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
Linus Pauling,
Erich Hückel,
Douglas Hartree,
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock, to cite a few.[
citation needed]
Still, skepticism remained as to the general power of quantum mechanics applied to complex chemical systems.[
citation needed] The situation around 1930 is described by
Paul Dirac:
[34]The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.
Hence the quantum mechanical methods developed in the 1930s and 1940s are often referred to as theoretical
molecular or
atomic physics to underline the fact that they were more the application of quantum mechanics to chemistry and
spectroscopy than answers to chemically relevant questions.
In the 1940s many physicists turned from
molecular or
atomic physics to
nuclear physics (like
J. Robert Oppenheimer or
Edward Teller). In 1951, a milestone article in quantum chemistry is the seminal paper of
Clemens C. J. Roothaan on
Roothaan equations.
[35] It opened the avenue to the solution of the
self-consistent field equations for small molecules like
hydrogen or
nitrogen. Those computations were performed with the help of tables of integrals which were computed on the most advanced computers of the time.[
citation needed]
[
edit] Molecular biology and biochemistry
Main articles:
History of molecular biology and
History of biochemistryBy the mid 20th century, in principle, the integration of physics and chemistry was extensive, with chemical properties explained as the result of the
electronic structure of the
atom;
Linus Pauling's book on The Nature of the Chemical Bond used the principles of quantum mechanics to deduce
bond angles in ever-more complicated molecules. However, though some principles deduced from quantum mechanics were able to predict qualitatively some chemical features for biologically relevant molecules, they were, till the end of the 20th century, more a collection of rules, observations, and recipes than rigorous
ab initio quantitative methods.[
citation needed]
Diagrammatic representation of some key structural features of DNA
This heuristic approach triumphed in 1953 when
James Watson and
Francis Crick deduced the double helical structure of
DNA by constructing models constrained by and informed by the knowledge of the chemistry of the constituent parts and the
X-ray diffraction patterns obtained by
Rosalind Franklin.
[36] This discovery lead to an explosion of research into the
biochemistry of life.
In the same year, the
Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated that basic constituents of
protein, simple
amino acids, could themselves be built up from simpler molecules in a
simulation of primordial
processes on Earth. Though many questions remain about the true nature of the origin of life, this was the first attempt by chemists to study hypothetical processes in the laboratory under controlled conditions.[
citation needed]
In 1983
Kary Mullis devised a method for the in-vitro amplification of DNA, known as the
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which revolutionized the chemical processes used in the laboratory to manipulate it. PCR could be used to synthesize specific pieces of DNA and made possible the
sequencing of DNA of organisms, which culminated in the huge
human genome project.
An important piece in the double helix puzzle was solved by one of Pauling's student
Matthew Meselson and
Frank Stahl, the result of their collaboration (
Meselson-Stahl experiment) has been called as "the most beatiful experiment in biology".
They used a centrifugation technique that sorted molecules according to differences in weight. Because nitrogen atoms are a component of DNA, they were labelled and therefore tracked in replication in bacteria.
[
edit] Chemical industry
Main article:
Chemical industryThe later part of the nineteenth century saw a huge increase in the exploitation of
petroleum extracted from the earth for the production of a host of chemicals and largely replaced the use of
whale oil,
coal tar and
naval stores used previously. Large scale production and
refinement of petroleum provided feedstocks for
liquid fuels such as
gasoline and
diesel,
solvents,
lubricants,
asphalt,
waxes, and for the production of many of the common materials of the modern world, such as synthetic
fibers,
plastics,
paints,
detergents,
pharmaceuticals,
adhesives and
ammonia as
fertilizer and for other uses. Many of these required new
catalysts and the utilization of
chemical engineering for their cost-effective production.
In the mid-twentieth century, control of the electronic structure of
semiconductor materials was made precise by the creation of large ingots of extremely pure single crystals of
silicon and
germanium. Accurate control of their chemical composition by doping with other elements made the production of the solid state
transistor in 1951 and made possible the production of tiny
integrated circuits for use in electronic devices, especially
computers.
Posts
