Physical chemist Ostwald

Commercially, nitric acid is made by a three-step process developed by the German physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932). The starting material is ammonia, which is burned in an excess of air at 900°C, using a platinum-rhodium catalyst ... 

The names of van t Hoff, Arrhenius, Ostwald, and Nernst dot the pages of Van Hise s work and with good reason. His understanding of the effects of temperature and pressure on chemical reactions and of the roles of water and ionic equilibria in metamorphic processes was derived largely from his reading of the work of these physical chemists. "The handling of the problems of rock alteration with fairly satisfactory results," he later wrote, "was possible because of the rise of physical chemistry. 

Historical introductions to chemistry courses and citations in journal articles provided ample opportunity for scientists to trace family lines to suit the discipline-building task at hand and to set up a record for later historians. Ostwald made sure to settle his name into a progeny of physical chemists in his history of electrochemistry. Later, Ingold minimized the historical role of contemporary rivals by spare citations to work well known at the time. 

Aristotle was perfectly at liberty to be sceptical about atoms, because the arguments for and against were all philosophical. Somewhat remarkably, the same was true even at the end of the nineteenth century, when several distinguished scientists shared Aristotle s view. Wilhelm Ostwald, a German physical chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1909, typified the conviction of many scientists that atomism was merely a convenient hypothesis and not to be taken too literally. 

M. D. Saltzman, Morris Loeb Ostwald s first American student and America s first physical chemist , Bull. Hist. Chem., 1998,22, 10-15. 

The Ostwald process is the basis for the modem family of processes that make nitric acid by the catalytic oxidation of ammonia. Wilhelm Ostwald, a German physical chemist, discovered it in 1900. The process was used by Germany during World War I to make explosives after the Allied blockade cut off the regular German supply of nitrites from Chile and other places96. 

Ostwald The basis of the modem family of processes for making nitric acid by the oxidation of ammonia over a platinum catalyst. Named after the eminent German physical chemist Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853 to 1932). His invention was patented in the United States in 1902, but the patent was not granted in Germany, where the process had to be operated in secret. Ostwald received the Nobel Prize for this work in 1909. 

Yet Haber barely paused to savor his success. He wanted even more. Karlsruhe s chemical institute had received permission to expand, establishing a new chair in physical chemistry, Haber s new specialty. Haber didn t heed the subtle signs that this professorship was intended for someone older and more experienced he wanted it himself. And when, in 1900, the position went instead to Max Julius Le Blanc, one of Ostwald s former assistants, Haber was bitter. In a letter to Ostwald, he confessed that he felt completely superfluous at Karlsruhe, and would almost certainly have to move on to a different university. (The letter can t be taken completely at face value. Ostwald supervised the shuffling of physical chemists among German universities, and Haber s letter served as an informal application for any other position in physical chemistry that Ostwald might know about.)... 

The electrical aspects of membrane phenomena have long been of interest in science, and attracted the attention in the nineteenth century of famous physical chemists including Gibbs, Nernst, Planck, and Ostwald. Originally, this interest was connected to electrical phenomena in biological systems. In the present discussion attention is focused on membranes used in specific ion electrodes. 

Nernst first studied physics before he became an assistant in 1887 to German physical chemist Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald at the University of Leipzig, then the only institute for physical chemistry in Germany. In 1891... 

Throughout his career as a chemist Ostwald followed the general approach of applying physical measurements and mathematical reasoning to chemical issues. One of his major research topics was the chemical affinities of acids and bases. To that end, he studied the points of equilibria in reaction systems where two acids in an aqueous solution compete with each other for a reaction with one base and vice versa. Because chemical analysis would have changed the equilibria, he skillfully adapted the measurement of physical properties, such as volume, refractive index, and electrical conductivity, to that problem. From his extensive data he derived for each acid and base a characteristic affinity coefficient independent of the particular acid-base reactions. 

According to the theory of Arrhenius, the variations of A with concentration are due to shifts in equilibrium between undissociated and dissociated species. This idea was expressed quantitatively by the Russian-German physical chemist Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) in terms of a dilution law. Consider an electrolyte AB which exists in solution partly as the undissociated species AB and partly as the ions A" and B""... 

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