Berzelius’ laboratory

Second-Floor Plan of Berzelius Laboratory and Dwelling House. 1—Kitchen-Laboratory. 2—Laboratory. 3—Bedroom. 4— Parlor. 5—Not used by Berzelius. 

In May, 1830, a careful comparison of vanadium and uranium was made in Berzelius laboratory. It was found that vanadium forms two series of compounds, the vanadic and the vanadous, but Berzelius and Sefstrom did not succeed in isolating the metal. 

Interior Court of a German Baker s House. Berzelius laboratory at the right. 

Lithium was discovered by Arfvedson (1817) in Berzelius laboratory in Stockholm. He discovered an unknown constituent element in the mineral petalite and called it lithium. The first isolation of this new element was again the work of Davy (and Brandes) in 1820. They succeeded to get small amounts of the metal by means of their electrolytic method. Bunsen and Matthiessen were able to obtain larger quantities of the metal. They electrolyzed lithium chloride in 1855. 

Discovery J. A. Arfwedson, working at Berzelius laboratory, discovered the element lithium in 1817 in the mineral petalite found in the iron ore mines on the island of Uto in the Stockholm archipelago. 

Everything in Berzelius laboratory is conspicuously dean and in admirable order everything is in its place, ready for immediate use. He also uses many ingenious machines, which facilitate or shorten his operations, the invention of which he attributes to assessor Gahn. But many of them he has made by himself. 

Ever since his time of study in Stockholm Sefstrom had had good contact with his teacher Berzelius. Thus it was quite natural that he informed him of the important discovery. As early as May 1830, obviously with the small quantity he extracted from rod iron, experiments started in Berzelius laboratory "... When the new body was reduced with hydrogen to a lower oxidation state it gave bluish-green solutions with acids. It was also soluble in alkalis. ... 

Lithium was recognized as a new alkali metal by J. A. Arfved.son in 1817 whilst he was working as a young assistant in J. J. Berzelius s laboratory. He noted that Li compounds were similar to those of Na and K but that the carbonate and hydroxide were much less soluble... 

Sweden produced a disproportionate number of outstanding chemists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jons Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) determined with amazing accuracy the atomic masses of virtually all the elements known in his time. In his spare time, he invented such modern laboratory tools as the beaker, the flask, the pipet, and the ringstand. 

The term organic chemistry was first used by the Swedish chemist Berzelius in 1807 (Larsson, 1981). He coined the name to describe the chemistry of substances derived from living matter. Berzelius was a staunch believer in the vis vitalis theory, which held that such substances were endowed with a mystical vital force that precluded their synthesis in the laboratory from materials of mineral origin. Ironically, it was a student of Berzelius, Wohler, who heralded the demise of vitalism with his synthesis of urea from ammonium cyanate (Wohler, 1928). In a letter to Berzelius in 1828, Wohler wrote I must tell you that I can make urea without requiring kidneys, or even an animal, whether a human being or a dog . 

This leads to the question of who should be considered the ultimate discoverer of a chemical element Should it be the first person to describe the initial properties, the one who found the oxide or the metal, the one who separated the element or the first one to publish their results On the matter of publication, the Swedish chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius published an annual review (equivalent to our present abstract service) during the early nineteenth century. Berzelius usually cited articles published in other journals, but he also reported on the work in his laboratory which had not yet been published. This enabled his assistant Carl-Gustav Mosander to receive early credit for work that Mosander chose not to formally publish until many years later after he had worked out all of the details. In the element review, we shall see that the answer to the above questions would be any of the above criteria could qualify for discovery of particular elements. 

In 1807 Berzelius became professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the Carolian Medico-Chirurgical Institute in Stockholm. His duties there were not heavy, and he was able to spend a great deal of time conducting experiments in the institute s laboratory. The papers that... 

Berzelius determined the atomic weights of nearly all the elements then known, and was the first chemist to determine them accurately. (19). He referred his atomic weights to oxygen, which, however, he allowed to equal 100, instead of 16 as in our present system. In his little laboratory that looked like a kitchen and in which the sandbath on the stove was never allowed to cool, Berzelius discovered the important elements selenium, silicon, thorium, cerium, and zirconium (18). 

In his travel diary Berzelius wrote, Hatchett himself is a very agreeable man of about forty to forty-five years. His father was a rich coach-maker, and the son, although a famous chemist at the time of his father s death, has continued to carry on the business. He is in very good circumstances, and lives in Roehampton on a little estate built in a fine Italian style and excellently maintained.. . . Close by his Italian villa he has a very well-equipped laboratory, but for a long time he has not worked (30). 

On February 24, 1829, Berzelius wrote to Eilhard Mitscherlich, "Wollaston s death grieves me. His specifications for making platina pliable were circulated at the same time as the news of his death. As I got iridium to cohere in an analogous manner, I was struck all the more by his simple method, went out into the laboratory, where I had a wet filter with platina on it, partly washed, which I pressed in a vice, dried, and ignited over a spirit lamp in a small platina crucible, and got it so coherent that it could no longer be broken with the fingers and could easily be cold-hammered. That s as far as I have yet gone. That was ten minutes work, then I had to let it wait for a better time (83). 

Stockholm laboratory that he made this great discovery at the age of twenty-five years, Berzelius described this chemical event in a letter to C.-L. Berthollet written on February 9, 1818 ... 

Berzelius is always busy, said Johnston. He works twelve to fourteen hours every day. But in spite of all he has done for experimental chemistry, one must not think that he works without respite in his laboratory. Often, when he is composing, he stops for months at a time. If, during his writing, he comes across some passage which seems obscure to him, he lays down his pen, goes into his laboratory, and carries out new researches.. . . ... 

He had continued his chemical experiments all through his medical course, and Professor Gmelin, who had not failed to notice his surprising skill, advised him to relinquish medicine for chemistry. Wohler therefore wrote to Berzelius for permission to enter his laboratory in Stockholm. On August 1 the great Swedish master gave his famous reply One who has studied under the direction of Herr Leopold Gmelin will certainly find little to learn with me.. . . You may come when you wish. ... 

He returned to Upsala, passed his examinations successfully, and was placed m charge of the laboratory. Here, among Berzelius balances, blowpipes, and preparations, he became a true disciple of that great master. After completing some researches on the compounds of selenium, Nilson and Pettersson began to study the mineral euxenite, hoping to measure the chemical and physical constants of the rare earth elements... 

Clemens Alexander Winkler was bom at Freiberg on December 26, 1838, but grew up in Zschopenthal, a village in the Saxon Erzgebirge where his father, Kurt Alexander Winkler, operated a smalt works. Kurt Winkler was himself a well-known chemist and metallurgist, who had studied under Berzelius and N. G. Sefstrom, and had fitted up an excellent metallurgical laboratory in the smalt works (7, 30). 

The interruptions of army life were never able to stifle Arrhenius s love of science, and he always regretted that he had been snatched away so early from his studies and thrust into the occupations of practical life (69). In the school year 1816-17, when he was about sixty years old, he studied chemistry in Beizelius laboratory. Almost to the close of his life he continued to attend Berzelius lectures. Even the disconnected words which Arrhenius uttered during the delirium of his last illness showed that his mind was still occupied with mmeralogical chemistry (69). 

From a painting by J. Way.) Berzelius was an independent discoverer of the earth "cena" and much of the early research on the rare earths was done m his laboratory... 

Anna Sundstrom," Berzelius Housekeeper. She kept house for him for many years before he was married and prepared the meals in the kitchen-laboratory, where his sand bath on the stove was never allowed to cool. Berzelius once said that he could not have thus entrusted the management of his home to any other person of the servant class. 

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