Dobereiner

Furfural was first isolated in the eady nineteenth century. Dobereiner is credited with the discovery. He obtained a small amount of a yellow "oil" (too Htde to characterize) as a by-product in the preparation of formic acid (8). Other chemists found that the same "oil" having a charactedstic aroma could be obtained by boiling finely divided vegetable materials such as oats, com, sawdust, bran, etc, with aqueous sulfuric acid or other acids (9,10). The oil was present in the Hquid resulting from condensation of the vapors produced during heating. The empirical formula was determined by Stenhouse... 

J. P. Montgomery, Dobereiner s Triads and Atomic Numbers, Journal of Chemical Education, 8-. 162-162, 1931. 

Perhaps the earliest hints of any numerical regularity among the atomic weights of the elements was discovered as early as 1817 by Dobereiner. He was the first to notice the existence of various groups of three elements, subsequently called triads, that showed chemical similarities. In addition, such elements displayed an important numerical relationship, namely that the equivalent weight, or atomic weight, of the middle element is the approximate mean of the values of the two flanking elements in the triad. 

In 1817 Dobereiner found that if certain elements were combined with oxygen in binary compounds, a numerical relationship could be discerned among the equivalent weights of these compounds. Thus when oxides of calcium, strontium, and barium were considered, the equivalent weight of strontium oxide was approximately the mean of those of calcium oxide and barium oxide. The three elements in question, strontium, calcium, and barium were said to form a triad. 

Though Dobereiner was working with weights that had been deduced with the relatively crude experimental methods of the time, his values compare rather well with current values for the triad ... 

Dobereiner s observation had little impact on the chemical world at first but later became very influential. He is now regarded as one of the earliest pioneers of the development of the periodic system. Very little happened regarding triads... 

The mean value for this triad is reasonably close to Berzelius value for bromine of 78.383. Dobereiner also obtained a triad involving some alkali metals, sodium, lithium, and potassium, which were known to share many chemical properties ... 

Suffice it to say that Dobereiner s research established the notion of triads as a powerful concept, which several other chemists were soon to take up with much effect. Indeed, Do-bereiner s triads, which would appear on the periodic table grouped in vertical columns, represented the first step in fitting the elements into a system that would account for their chemical properties and would reveal their physical relationships. 

It appears that, in the space of a single day, February 17 th 1869, Mendeleev not only began to make horizontal comparisons but also produced the first version of a full periodic table that included most of the known elements. Moreover, Mendeleev s overall approach consists of looking at atomic weight differences in conformity with the general principle of triads even though he was not specifically identifying triads in the manner of Dobereiner. 

Dobereiner Selective oxidation of ethanol to acetic acid on platinum... 

Tarrand, J.J, Krieg, NR and Dobereiner, J. 1978. A taxonomic study of the Spirillum Up(ferum group, with description of a new genus. Azospirillum gen. nov., and two species Azospirillum lipoferum (Beijerinck) sp. nov. and Azospitillum hrasilense sp. nov. Can. J. Microbiol. 24 967-980. 

J. Dobereiner, J. M. Day, and P. J. Dart, Nitrogenasc activity and oxygen sensitivity of the Paspaluin notatum-Azotobacter paspali association. Journal of General Microbiology 77 103 (1972). 

Dobereiner reports the first catalytic hydrogenation the Pt-catalyzed combustion of hydrogen in air [2,3]... 

Certainly, some similarities in the chemical properties of distant elements were recognized early on. J. W. Dobereiner was the first to draw attention to so-called "triads" (e.g. Ca, Sr, Ba). Some elements formed strong bases, others strong acids and these seemed to have an affinity for each other. 

Dobereiner, J. W. (1829). An attempt to group elementary substances according to their analogies. Annalen der Physik und Chemie 15 301-307. 

In Germany, Liebig s well-known laboratory at Giessen was preceded by several other chemical laboratories, notably, those of Friedrich Stromeyer at Gottingen and Johann Dobereiner at Jena. 86 It is striking, as Russell McCormmach has noted, that in Germany and elsewhere the first directors of laboratories in experimental physics tended to be men trained in chemistry. 87... 

S.R. Goi and J. Dobereiner. Recent advances in BNF with non-legume plants. Soil Bid. Biochem. 29, 911-922 (1997). 

Habermehl, G.G., Martz, W., Tokarnia, C.H., Dobereiner, J. and Mendez, M.C. (1988). Livestock poisoning in South America by species of the Senecio plant, Toxicon, 26, 275-286. 

The catalysis field began in the nineteenth century with work on heterogeneous platinum group metals from such contributors as Berzelius, Faraday, Dobereiner, Mitscherhch, Davy, Sabatier, and Ostwald [1, 2]. Iridium never held a very high place in the field, however, because it showed no special advantages. Rylander expresses this point well in his classic 1967 work on heterogeneous catalysis [3],... 

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