Szebelledy

Szebelledy, Laszlo — (Apr. 20,1901, Budapest, Hungary (Austro-Hungarian Empire) - Jan. 23, 1944, Budapest, Hungary) Earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Budapest. He joined the staff of the same university and became a professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry in 1939. He also worked with Treadwell in Zurich and with Bottger in Leipzig. 

Szebelledy with his co-worker, - Somogyi invented - coulometric titration (analysis) in 1938 [i]. He published also seminal papers on catalytic microreactions. Ref. [i] Szebelledy L, Somogyi Z (1938) Fresenius Z Anal Chem 112 313, 323, 385, 391, 395, 400... 

Coulometric titration is a direct application of Faraday s laws of electrolysis, it was first applied in this mode by Szebelledy and Somogyi in 1939. 

Although the measurement of electricity through its chemical effects began quite early, the reverse of this process received little attention. The first major development occurred in 1938, when the Hungarian workers L. Szebelledy and Z. Somogyi described the titration of, for example, HCl with electrogenerated hydroxyl ion ( 0). The technique, coulometric titration, was rapidly extended, largely by American workers (41). 

It is undoubtedly true that the work of Szebelledy and Somogyi was founded on prior work. But as Lingane remarks "...it seems... that [they] deserve credit for being the first to appreciate clearly the catholicity of the method and its capodDilities as a widely applicable improvement on classical titrimetric technique. Henry Ford did not invent the wheel, but everyone agrees that he set it rolling as it never rolled before" (11). 

In order to make a quantitative measure of the amount of electricity required for a reaction to take place, a reliable coulometer is essential. Much of the early work in the field followed Szebelledy and Somogyi in using a chemical coulometer. This amounts to a circular application of the Faraday relation, so that an exact value of F is not required. On the other hand, it merely replaces an inconvenient or difficult chemical measurement with another one, hopefully less inconvenient. 

Figure 1. The coulometric titration apparatus of Szebelledy and Somogyi. Fj and E2 are the anode and cathode, respectively Cj and C2 are the two coulometers. (Redrawn with permission from Ref. 8. Copyright 1938 Springer-Verlag.)...

As in any titration, a suitable method of detection of the equivalence point is necessary. In general, it can be said that any of the techniques that are useful in classical volumetric titrimetry are also applicable to coulometric titrations. As noted above, Szebelledy and Somogyi used traditional color-change indicators to determine their end points. 

Fig. 12.19 Antal Vegh (1903-1995) also a pupil of Lajos Winkler, later professor of chemistry of pharmacy, Szebelledy, Eidey-Gruz (standing). Pal Viilecz, Magda Berg (future wife of Eidey-Gruz), Eva Schdmer, Gyula Bund, Mrs. Vegh, Katalin Ba-g...

Szebelledy and, our next hero, Erdey-Gruz were the members of the new generation bom already in the twentieth century. We can see in Fig. 12.19 the... 

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