Sobrero, Ascanio

Nitroglycerin was discovered by Ascanio Sobrero, in 1846. Its danger made it a laboratoiy curiosity until Alfred Nobel improved it along with other inventions such as the blasting cap ing mercury fulminate. 

Sulfuric acid is not all bad. In fact, it has many useful functions. One of those is to make nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin is needed to make explosives like dynamite, but it is also used as a medicine. This dual-purpose chemical compound was discovered by Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888) in 1847. 

Nobel Foundation. Ascanio sobrero, Nobelprize.org. Available online. URL http //nobelprize.org/alfred nobel/biographical/ articles/life-work/sobrero.html. Accessed on March 10, 2008. 

Gunpowder was the primary explosive used for almost one thousand years. In 1846, the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888) first prepared nitroglycerin, but it was twenty years before Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) developed its use commercially. Nobel was bom in Stockholm, Sweden, where his father, Immanuel Nobel (1801-1872), ran a heavy constmction company. When Alfred was four, his father s company went bankrupt and Immanuel left for St. Petersburg, Russia, to start over. Immanuel rebuilt a successful business in Russia, in part due to his ability to develop and sell mines to the Russian Navy for use in the Crimean War. Alfred and the rest of his family joined his father in Russia when he was nine, and Alfred received an excellent education with private tutors. He studied in the United States and Paris where he met Sobrero. Nobel studied... 

N0)H2C.CH(0N02).CH2(0N02). An oily expl liquid first prepd by Ascanio Sobrero in Univ of Torino, Italy. A detailed description of its prepn, props,.analysis and uses is given by Belgrano (Ref 31, pp 140ff)... 

History. The first LE of practical importance was NG. It was discovered by an Italian chemist, Ascanio Sobrero, in 1846. 

Historical. NG was first prepd by Ascanio Sobrero in 1846 in Italy by adding glycerol to MA (mixed acid, usually nitric-sulfuric) at 10°. 

Nitroglycerine and dynamite succeeded black powder as the chief explosives. An Italian chemist, Ascanio Sobrero, invented NG in 1846 and the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1867,... 

The first important invention before the invention of NC NG was the prepn in 1833 of impure Nitrostarch(NS) by Braconnot. The next step was prepn in 1838 by Pelouze of nitrated paper and cotton, but it was not realized that these were actually impure, low nitrogen content, NC s. More important than the work of the above investigators were the prepn in 1846 of NC of high N content (known as Guncotton), independently by C.F. Schonbein (1799 1866) and F. Bottger (1806 1886) and in the same year of NG by an Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888). The method of prepn and some props of NG were published in France in Feb 1847 by Th-J. Pelouze (1807-1867)... 

Nitroglycerine (C3H5N309) (2.6) was first prepared by the Italian, Ascanio Sobrero in 1846 by adding glycerol to a mixture of sulfuric and nitric acids. In 1863, a laboratory plant was set up to manufacture nitroglycerine by the Nobel family. In 1882, the Boutmy-Faucher process for the manufacture of nitroglycerine was developed in France and also adopted in England. 

Nitroglycerin was first prepared late in the year 1846 or early in 1847 by the Italian chemist, Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888), who was at the time professor of applied chemistry at the University of Torino. Sobrero had studied medicine in the same city, and in 1834 had been authorized to practice as a physician. After that he studied with Pelouze in Paris and served as his assistant in his private laboratory from 1840 to 1843. In 1843 he left Paris, studied for several months with Liebig at Giessen, and returned to Torino where he took up the duties of a teacher and in 1845... 

Figube 51. Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888). First prepared nitroglycerin, nitromannite, and nitrolactose, 1846-1847. 

Alfred Nobel invented dynamite while developing a safe way to handle nitroglycerin, while Ascanio Sobrero, the Italian chemist who invented nitroglycerin, did not achieve fortune and fame from his invention. 

The world conflict of 1914-18 opened a new field of study in the Chemistry of War that of the war gases. Thus the Chemistry of War, which had for its cradle the chemical laboratory in Turin where Ascanio Sobrero discovered nitroglycerine and which for 60 years was confined to the study of explosives, underwent a new development and a new orientation when substances which had an offensive action on the human and animal organism were first used on the field of battle. Then commenced the study of war gases which has become one of the most complex and important departments of chemistry. 

One of the components of cordite is nitroglycerine, which had been discovered in 1847 by the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero (1812-88). It was a shattering explosive, also too touchy for war. Its use in peacetime to blast roads through mountains and to move tons of earth for a variety of purposes was... 

On 31 May 1914, less than a month before the assassinations in Sarajevo, Italian chemists met in Turin for a conference, convened by the Associazione Chimica Industriale, to celebrate the life of Ascanio Sobrero (1812-1888). Sobrero was an early chemistry student of T.J. Pelouze in Paris and Justus von Liebig in Giessen, who had spent his life as a professor of chemistry at the University of Turin. In 1846-1847, he made his name with the development of nitroglycerine, and later acted as a consultant for the dynamite plant that Alfred Nobel established in Avigliana, a few kilometres from Turin. ... 

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