The Beginnings of Modern Chemistry

like many scholars of his day, studied and published in a number of areas including theology, philosophy, science, and political thought. In the area of chemistry, Boyle, in the tradition of van Helmont, studied gases. Aided by his assistant Robert Hooke, Boyle used a vacuum pump to conduct experiments in which he discovered air was necessary for life, sound does not travel in a vacuum, and that the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to pressure. This last discovery is one of the basic gas laws, and today is known as Boyle s Law (see Chapter 9). Boyle applied his work on gases to a study of the atmosphere and determined the density of air, and how atmospheric pressure changes with elevation. 

During the seventeenth century, an atomic view of nature was employed to 

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The concept of a gas law goes back to the beginnings of modern chemistry. In the late seventeenth century, Robert Boyle noticed a relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas. The volume was inversely proportional to the pressure. Increase the pressure and the volume will decrease. 

Chemistry may be characterized as the science of transformation of matter at low to moderate energies. The study of chemical reactions, i.e. how products are formed from reactants, is central to chemistry [1]. Since the beginning of modern chemistry one has... 

Just before and during the French Revolution, another revolution was taking place. In any study of the history of chemistry, the period between 1770 and 1790 is commonly regarded as the Chemical Revolution. This revolution, which marked the beginnings of modern chemistry, occurred in large part as a result of Lavoisier s scientific excellence and brilliant experimental capabilities. He played a role in many aspects of the Chemical Revolution, including the abandonment of the phlogiston theory of combustion, the evolution of the concept of an element, and the development of a new chemical nomenclature. 

Lavoisier s experiments and his explanations of them and of the experiments of others are often regarded as the beginning of modern chemistry. It is not an exaggeration to say that modem chemistry is the result of careful measurement. 

There may be different considerations of what the beginning of modern chemistry was. To me, it was the recognition that the building blocks— atoms—of the same or different elements link up for different substances. Somehow—and for a long time it was not clear how—in such a linkage the atoms must undergo... 

Although the Miller-Urey experiments of 1953 are of only historic interest today, they do mark the beginning of prebiotic chemistry and modern biogenesis research. 

The landmark discovery of ferrocene by Kealy and Paulson in 1951 marked the beginning of modern organometallic chemistry. The first organometallic addition polymer was polyvinyl-ferrocene synthesized by Arimoto and Haven in 1955. While polyvinylferrocene (structure 11.32) had been synthesized it was about another decade until the work of Pittman, Hayes, and George, and Baldwin and Johnson allowed a launch of ferrocene-containing polymers. 

Until the mid-eighteenth century, scientists believed organic compounds came only from live plants and animals. They reasoned that organisms possessed a vital force that enabled them to produce organic compounds. The first serious blow to this theory of vitalism, which marked the beginning of modern organic chemistry, occurred when Friedrich Wohler (1800-1882) synthesized urea from the two inorganic substances lead cyanate and ammonium hydroxide ... 

It is amazing that alchemy, once called the Divine Art or Sacred Science, has fallen into such obscurity that it is now only remembered as the primitive beginnings of modern chemistry. And yet, alchemy lies at the root of every Western Esoteric tradition as well as many of the arts and sciences, including medicine and pharmacology. Alchemy has been called "The Mother of all Science and Wisdom."... 

Antoine Lavoisier with his wife. Lavoisier was born in Paris on August 26, 1743. From the beginning of his scientific career, Lavoisier recognized the importance of accurate measurements. His careful weighings showed that mass is conserved in chemical reactions and that combustion involves reaction with oxygen. Also, he wrote the first modern chemistry textbook. He is often called the father of modern chemistry. 

The discovery of ferrocene and the establishment of its structure in the 1950s mark the beginning of modern organometallic chemistry. Today ferrocene chemistry is ubiquitous, and numerous significant applications are to be found in the areas of homogenous catalysis, asymmetric... 

The Egyptian Spnn-Spnn, The Arabian Abou-el-noum, the Chinese minans, the Indian afim, and the primitive Megisterium opii are all the same, i.e., todays opium - a word coined by the ancient Greeks. Opium reached a peak of scientific significance because the isolation of the first alkaloid from opium ex-P. somniferum marked the beginning of modern alkaloid chemistry. (Szantay et al. 1983). This initiated the genetic and chemical investigations. 

While the collection of chemical facts continued to be enlarged by the artisan, these facts were interpreted by the philosophers— who also served as mathematicians, astronomers, anatomists, and physicists, as well as theologians and political theoreticians. In fact not until the 1800s did European scientists begin to think of their work as separate from that of philosophers. Though philosophy is common to all cultures, the most influential in the development of modern chemistry were the philosophers of Greece. These thinkers derived hypotheses about the nature of matter and material interactions that helped and hindered chemical developments over the next 2000 years. 

The polydiacetylenes and polytriacetylenes differ from polyacetylene because preorganization of the diacetylene and triacetylene is required for a successful polymerization (7). This remarkable observation was first recognized (8,9) in 1969 and marks the beginning of modern polydiacetylene and polytriacetylene chemistry. In a few cases, this topochemically controlled polymerization occurs from a crystal of the monomer to a crystal of the polymer, giving rare examples of macroscopic single polymer crystals (9). 

Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) is often referred to as the father of modern chemistry. His book Traite Elementarie de Chime, published in 1789, marks the beginning of chemistry as we know it today, in the same way as Darwin s Origin of Species forever changed the science of biology. 

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