October in Chemistry

Today in Chemistry
‘Elastoplast’ – sticking plaster dressings –
were first manufactured in Hull on
October 1st 1928.

Today in Chemistry
On October 2nd 1852, William Ramsay was
born. Ramsay’s work on the liquification of
air led to the discovery of a whole Group
of elements – the Noble Gases.

Today in Chemistry
On October 3rd 1952 Great Britain
became the third nuclear power (after the
United States and the Soviet Union) by
exploding a test bomb of its own. The test
was carried out in Australia.

Today in Chemistry
On October 4th 1762, the Scottish
chemist Joseph Black carried out three
important experiments on steam. These
led to the idea of latent heat; boiling
water at 100°C needs to be heated more in
order to turn it into steam at 100°C. This
extra heat that you
need to add to
change state from
liquid to gas is known
as latent heat. If
you get burnt by
steam, it is more
painful and it causes
more damage to your
skin than being burnt by boiling water.

Today in Chemistry
The highly explosive
compound, nitrogen
triiodide, NI3, was
discovered on 5th
October 1811 by the
French chemist
Pierre Dulong. Injury
by explosion did not
deter him from
continuing his
research. One year
later he lost an eye
and two of his fingers in a further
nitrogen triiodide experiment!

Today in Chemistry
On October 6th 1807, Humphry Davy first
isolated potassium. He made a giant
battery in the basement of the Royal
Institution, Albermarle Street, London
and used it to electrolyse molten
potassium chloride.

Today in Chemistry
On October 7th 1885 Niels Bohr, the
father of quantum theory, was born. His
quantized model of the atom explained all
the lines in the atomic emission spectrum
of hydrogen. He won a Nobel Prize in 1922.

Today in Chemistry
On October 8th
1850, Henry-Louis
le Châtelier, was
born. He studied
reversible
reactions and in
particular, the
effect of
temperature and
pressure on the
position of
equilibrium. Le
Châtelier’s principle states that if you
make a change to a system at equilibrium,
the position of equilibrium will change so
as to counteract that change.

Today in Chemistry
On October 9th 2001, letters postmarked
in Trenton, USA, that later tested
positive for anthrax
spores were mailed to
senators Tom Daschle
and Patrick Leahy. The
senators were
unharmed, but two
weeks later a
Washington postal worker, Joseph
Curseen, died of anthrax. Anthrax is a
deadly disease that is caused by bacteria.
Unlike most bacteria, bacillus anthracis
can survive for long periods of time in
seed-like structures called spores.

Today in Chemistry
On October 10th 1731,
Henry Cavendish was born.
He was the first person to
realise that water is not
an element (it’s actually a
compound in case you were
wondering!) and he
discovered the element
hydrogen, H. The
Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge
University, which has had a long and
distinguished
history of
chemistry
research, was
named after him.

Today in Chemistry
On October
11th 1968,
Apollo 7,
the first
manned
Apollo
mission, was
launched.
Chemists
played a
key role in
numerous aspects of the mission. For
example the Teflon spacesuits, the
electricity-generating fuel cells and the
rocket fuel (a mixture of kerosene and
liquid oxygen).

Today in Chemistry
On October
12th 1812,
Ascanio
Sobrero, who
discovered the
explosive
nitroglycerine,
was born.
He said, "When I think of all the victims killed during
nitroglycerine explosions, and the terrible havoc that has
been wreaked, which in all probability will continue to
occur in the future, I am almost ashamed to admit to
being its discoverer."

Today in Chemistry
On October
13th 1985, the
first
observation of
a proton –
antiproton
collision was
made by the
Collider
Detector at
Fermilab in the
United States.

Today in Chemistry
On October 14th
1863 Alfred Nobel
patented a new
method for
preparing
nitroglycerine. He
was to go on to
invent dynamite
(nitroglycerine
soaked in clay to
make it less
unstable), which was to make his fortune.
After he died, he left a large sum of
money to establish the Nobel Prize.

Today in Chemistry
On October 15th
1951, the first oral
contraceptive pill (a
steroid hormone
called norethindrone)
was developed by
Carl Djerassi and his
team of chemists.

Today in Chemistry
On October 16th 1875, H.C. Sherman, who
discovered the action of vitamins in our
body, was born.

Today in Chemistry
Albert Einstein arrived in the United
States as a refugee on October 17th 1933.
He was forced to
leave his home in
Nazi Germany
because of his
Jewish faith.
He spent the rest of
his life at Princeton
University, where he
tried to explain
gravitational, magnetic and nuclear forces
by one unified field theory. In 1939 he
wrote to the President of the United
States to say that it would be possible to
develop an atomic bomb.

Today in Chemistry
On October
18th 1799, C.F.
Schonbein,
discoverer of
ozone, was
born. He also
made
important
discoveries
about hydrogen
peroxide and
guncotton.

Today in Chemistry
During a
historical session
of the Berlin
Physical Society
on 19th October
1900, Max Planck
announced his
famous ‘quantum
principle’; at the
time, a result of
inspired intuition
rather than of experimental deductions.
Within two months theoretical proof was
put before the Society, but like so many
great scientific breakthroughs, it took
many years and much discussion before it
became generally accepted.

Today in Chemistry
On October 20th 1891, James Chadwick,
who discovered the neutron, was born. He
won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935.

Today in Chemistry
On October 21st 1803, John Dalton read a
scientific paper containing his first list of
atomic weights to the Literary and
Philosophical Society of Manchester. This
was the first time since ancient Greece
that the idea that everything in the
universe is made of atoms was seriously
considered.

Today in Chemistry
On October
22nd 1881 C.J.
Davisson was
born. The
Davisson-
Germer
electron
diffraction
experiment
showed that
electrons
could behave as waves as well as particles.
This led to the (rather confusing) idea of
wave-particle duality.

Today in Chemistry
Today is international Mole Day! Why?
Well one mole is 6.02 x 1023 particles, so
at 6:02 am on 10/23 it is Mole Moment! I
kid you not.

Today in Chemistry
On October 24th 1939, stockings made of
the newly discovered polymer, nylon
(rather than silk) first went on sale in
Wilmington, Delaware, USA.

Today in Chemistry
On October 25th 2005 UNICEF launched a
global AIDS awareness campaign. Although
there is still no cure, AIDS
can be treated by antiviral
drugs such as AZT and DDI,
but fewer than 5% of
children with AIDS are
receiving treatment.

Today in Chemistry
On October 26th 2002, the ‘Nord-Ost
Siege’, a hostage crisis at a Moscow
theatre, ended in tragedy. Russian special
forces used an experimental knockout gas,
but as well as killing the Chechen rebels,
at least 129 of the 800 hostages were also
killed. The Russian authorities refused to
divulge the chemical composition of the
gas, but it is thought to have been a
mixture of anaesthetics including fentanyl.

Today in Chemistry
On October 27th 1788, Antoine Lavoisier
narrowly avoided blowing himself and his
wife up during
a sequence of
experiments.
The following
year he
published the
most
important
book in the
history of
chemistry,
Traite
Elementaire
de Chimie.

Today in Chemistry
The copper-coated
Statue of Liberty
was unveiled on
October 28th 1886.
The statue was a
gift from the people
of France to
commemorate the
100th anniversary of
American
independence.

Today in Chemistry
On October 29th 1947, scientists
attempted to extinguish a forest fire in
the United States by ‘seeding’ a cumulus
cloud with dry ice for the first time.
Planes dropped small lumps of solid carbon
dioxide into the clouds above the fire and
this triggered rainfall.

Today in Chemistry
On October 30th 1961, the Soviet Union
detonated a 58 megaton yield hydrogen
bomb over Novaya Zemlya – the largest
nuclear device ever to be detonated.

Today in Chemistry
On October 31st 1835, the organic chemist
Adolf von Baeyer was born. In this lab he
synthesised many new organic dyes,
including indigo. He also introduced the
idea that in a ring of four or less carbon
atoms the bonds will be strained and
therefore the molecule will be unstable.
He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in
1905.

October in Chemistry
Written and compiled by
Anthony Hardwicke
Thanks to Nigel Freestone, Northampton
University
Acknowledgements for Pictures
7, 8, 11, 22, 23, 25 www.SciencePhoto.com
12, 19, 20, 21, 24
www.ScienceandSociety.co.uk
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