Famous chemists today

The Most Famous Chemist Scientists Of All Time

You and I might just think of chemistry as that one subject in school where you had to memorise a thousand seemingly arbitrary rules and do meaningless calculations, but it’s so much more than that. The fundamentals of how we think about the very world we live in come from this subject, and were pioneered by the ten people on our list of famous chemists.

So who were the best and brightest of these madscientists? Here's an overview of some of the most famous chemists and they're greatest achievements, which we'll go into more detail within the article:

ChemistContribution
Antoine LavoisierRecognised as the 'Father of Modern Chemistry'; established the law of conservation of mass.
John DaltonDeveloped the atomic theory, proposing that matter is composed of indivisible atoms.
Amedeo AvogadroFormulated Avogadro's law, stating equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of molecules.
Jöns Jacob BerzeliusIntroduced chemical notation and discovered elements like silicon, selenium, and thorium.

Joseph Priestley (1733–1804)

As well as being a philosopher, political theorist and dissenting clergyman, Joseph Priestley was the first scientist to discover oxygen. In August 1774, Priestley isolated what he called an ‘air’ that appeared to be completely new. It wasn’t until March 1775 that he wrote to several people about this new air, after conducting experiments into it.

Priestley shut mice in a tight-sealed container filled with the new air and found they could survive longer than with normal air. Although he didn't know it at the time, Priestley had discovered oxygen.

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895)

Louis Pasteur's research found that the souring of beer and wine was caused by microorganisms, and that these microbes could be removed by boiling and cooling the liquid immediately – now known as pasteurisation. This process was later extended to milk. By pasteurising it, the potentially harmful pathogens within it are killed off, making it much safer to drink.

As well as discovering microbiology, Pasteur also unearthed the process of vaccination. He proved that some diseases ar

Biographies of Chemists

Prepared by Peter Morris
Web presentation by Gerry Moss
Quick move to Chemists starting with A, B, C, E, F, G, H, K, M, P, R, S, T, V, W, and Z. More to be added later.

Neil Kensington Adam (1891-1973). Born in Cambridge, England, the son of a Classics don. After studying chemistry at Trinity College, Cambridge, he became a fellow of the college. During the First World War, he served as a chemist at the Royal Naval Airship Service at Kingsnorth in Kent. As the Royal Society Sorby Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, Adam extended his studies of surface films. He became a lecturer at University College, London, where he also carried out research on surface-active agents and detergents. He was then called to a Chair at the University of Southampton. Adam was an active Christian Scientist.

Paul Gabriel Adam (1856-1916). Born in Avesnes (Nord), near the Belgian border. After taking his doctorate at the Sorbonne, he became a principal sanitary inspector in Paris. He was then made Professor of Chemistry at a veterinary college at Alfort (Seine).

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