Jons Jacob Berzelius

Jöns Jacob Berzelius /jœns ˈjɑ̌ːkɔb bæˈʂěːljɵs]/ (20 August 1779 in Östergötland, Sweden - 17 August 1848 in Stockholm) was a Swedish physician and chemist. He devised the modern system of chemical notation, and along with John Dalton, Antoine Lavoisier, and Robert Boyle, he is considered the father of modern chemistry. He is recognized for having been the first analyst of the 19th century.

He discovered thorium, cerium, and selenium and was the first to isolate zirconium, silicon, and titanium. He also perfected the table of the atomic weights of the elements published by Dalton, whose errors he corrected.

Biography

Berzelius was born in Östergötland, in Sweden. He lost his parents at a young age. He was in charge of his relatives in Linköping, where he attended the school now known as Katedralskolan. Subsequently he enrolled at the University of Uppsala, where he learned the profession of physician from 1796 to 1801. He was taught chemistry by Anders Gustaf Ekeberg, the discoverer of tantalum. He worked as an apprentice in a pharmacy and with a doctor at the Medevi spa. During this time he analyzed the spring water. For his medical studies, he examined the influence of galvanic current on various diseases, graduating as a physician in 1802. He practiced medicine near Stockholm until a mine owner, Wilhelm Hisinger, discovered his analytical ability and endowed him with a laboratory.

In 1807 Berzelius was appointed professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the Karolinska Institutet.

In 1808 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which by then had been stagnant for several years due to declining interest in science in Sweden since the days of romanticism. In 1818 he was elected its secretary, and held the position until 1848. Berzelius is credited with revitalizing the Academy, which experienced a second golden age, the first being under the secretaryship of the astronomer Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin (1749 to 1783). In 1837, he was also elected a member of the Swedish Academy, with chair number 5.

For his enormous achievements in the field of chemistry (summarized below), Berzelius is considered the "father of chemistry in Sweden":

Achievements

New Elements

Berzelius is credited with identifying the chemical elements selenium, thorium, and cerium, and was the first to isolate silicon, zirconium, and titanium. Students working in Berzelius's laboratory also discovered lithium and vanadium.

Law of Definite Proportions

Berzelius Daguerreotype.

Shortly after arriving in Stockholm he wrote a chemistry textbook for his medical students, which was the starting point of his long and fruitful career. While carrying out experiments to inform the textbook he used the law of constant proportions, formulated by Joseph Louis Proust, and showed that inorganic substances are composed of different elements in constant proportions by weight. Based on this fact, in 1828 he compiled a table of relative atomic weights, where the atomic weight of oxygen was fixed at 100. This work provided evidence in favor of Dalton's atomic theory: that inorganic chemical compounds are composed of atoms combined in whole amounts. Discovering that atomic weights are not integer multiples of the weight of hydrogen (such as that of chlorine, 35.5 times the atomic weight of hydrogen), Berzelius also disproved Prout's hypothesis that elements are built from hydrogen atoms.

Chemical nomenclature

In order to systematize his experiments, he developed a system of chemical notation in which elements were denoted by simple symbols. He coded the elements according to the first letter of his Latin name, adding a second letter when there was a need to differentiate two elements whose names began with the same initial letter. For example, C for carbon, Ca for calcium, Cd for cadmium, etc., with the proportions indicated by numbers. This is basically the same system used today in the molecular formula, the only difference being that instead of the subscripts used today (for example, H₂O), Berzelius used superscripts (H²O). Despite its obvious advantage over the cumbersome and almost incomprehensible earlier system, Berzelius's proposed nomenclature met with resistance, and it took years to become universally accepted.

Better Chemical Terms

Berzelius is also credited with new terms used in chemistry such as catalysis, polymers, isomer, and allotrope, although their original definitions differ drastically from their modern usage. For example, he coined the term "polymer"; in 1833 to describe organic compounds that share identical empirical formulas but differ in overall molecular weight. The largest of the compounds is described as "polymer" one of the smallest used by Berzelius.

Mineralogy

Berzelius by Johan Gustaf Sandberg

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Berzelius was one of the first to base mineralogy on knowledge of chemical elements.

He described the following species:

• egirine, 1835;
• albita, 1815, together with Johan Gottlieb Gahn;
• 1804, together with Hisinger;
• Eucairite, 1818;
• mesoline, 1822 (not recognized by IMA);
• Zinc silicate (sinonymous of hemimorphite);
• Silicato de sesquimanganeso (synonymous of rodonite).

Biology

Berzelius also had an important influence on biology. He was the first to make the distinction between organic compounds (those that contain carbon), and inorganic compounds. In particular, he advised Gerardus Johannes Mulder on his elemental analysis of organic compounds, such as coffee, tea, and various proteins. The term "protein" it was in fact coined by Berzelius, after Mulder had observed that all proteins seemed to have the same empirical formula, and wrongly concluded that they could be composed of only one type of (very large) molecule.

Family

Berzelius Statue in the center of the Berzelii Park, Stockholm.

Berzelius Tomb

In 1835, at the age of 56, he married the 24-year-old Elisabeth Poppius, the daughter of a Swedish government minister, and in the same year was elevated to freiherr.

He died on August 7, 1848 at his home in Stockholm, where he had lived since 1806.

Work

He was the first analyst of the 19th century: in addition to carrying out an enormous number of analyzes with the greatest precision, He must be credited with the discovery of several simple bodies: Hisinger and Berzelius discovered the element cerium in 1807, in 1817 he identified selenium together with Johan Gottlieb Gahn, and as the third and last discovery, thorium in 1829. His students discovered two other elements: in 1817 Johann Arfvedson discovers lithium, and in 1830 Nils Gabriel Sefström rediscovers vanadium. Berzelius was the one who proposed the names lithium and vanadium, as well as sodium. He was the first chemist to isolate silicon (in 1823), zirconium (in 1824), thorium (in 1828), and titanium.

He studied the combinations of sulfur with phosphorus, fluorine and fluorides, he determined a large number of chemical equivalents. He was practically the creator of organic chemistry. He introduced the notions and words allotropy, catalysis, isomerism, halogen, organic radical, and protein. As much a philosopher as an experimenter, he consolidated the atomistic theory, as well as that of chemical proportions; he invented and made universally accept chemical formulas analogous to algebraic formulas in order to express the composition of bodies. To explain the phenomena, he adopted the famous theory of electrochemical dualism, and with this theory carried out many reforms in nomenclature and classification. He developed an electrochemical theory about radicals. He was also one of the first to base mineralogy on knowledge of the chemical elements of bodies. The current system of chemical notation was adopted thanks to Berzelius, who was the one who proposed it in 1813. Berzelius was one of the first to publish a table of molecular masses and atomic masses with acceptable accuracy.^{[citation required ]}

His electrochemical dualism was one of the first theories to consider chemical bonds between atoms; he proposed that atoms possessed two electrical poles, predominantly positive or negative, and that each union was established between atoms with poles of opposite sign. However, this theory could not explain the existence of molecules made up of atoms of the same element, such as H₂, N₂ or Cl₂, since their atoms would have "poles" of the same sign and would not attract each other.

Some posts

The Letters of Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Christian Friedrich Schönbein 1836 1847, London 1900

• Nova analysis aquarum medeviensium - 1800
• De electricitatis galvanicae apparatu cel. Volta excites in corpra organica effectu (your doctoral thesis of Medicine) Research on the effects of galvanism - 1802
• New mining system
• On the analysis of inorganic bodies - 1827
• Theory of the chemical proportions and analytical table of the atomic weights of the simple bodies and their most important combinations - 1835
• Treaty of mineral, vegetable and animal chemistry in several volumes between 1808 and 1830.
• Elements of mineralogy applied to the chemical sciences, work based on the method of M. Berzélius and containing the Natural and Metallurgical History of the mineral substances, their applications in pharmacy, medicine and domestic economy by Jons Jakob Berzelius - 1837
• Chemicals Treaty. One of the most complete works of the time on this matter. The first edition was published in Stockholm between 1808 and 1818 in 3 volumes in-8.
• From 1822 he published a Annual report on the progress of chemistry and mining.

Correspondence

Berzelius's correspondence with H.E. Örsted, Claude Louis Berthollet, Pierre Louis Dulong, Thomas Thomson, Alexandre Brongniart, Hans Gabriel Trolle-Wachtmeister, Théophile-Jules Pelouze, Eilhard Mitscherlich, Gerardus Johannes Mulder, Wilhelm Hisinger, Justus von Liebig, Gustaf Löwenhielm.

• Berzelius und Liebig (in German). München: Lehmann. 1893.
• Letters of Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Christian Friedrich Schönbein (in English). London: Williams & Norgate. 1900.
• Selbstbiographische Aufzeichnungen (in German). Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth. 1903.

Acknowledgments

• In 1818 Berzelius was ennobled by King Charles XIV John.
• Berzeliusskolan, a school next to her mother soul, KatedralskolanTake his name.
• The moon crater Berzelius bears this name in his honor.
• The asteroid (13109) Berzelius also commemorates its name.

• In 1939, his portrait appeared in a series of postal stamps commemorating the bicentennial of the foundation of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.