The Early History of Chemistry

Chemistry has been important since ancient limes. The processing of natural ores to produce metals for ornaments and weapons and the use of embalming fluids are just two applications of chanical phenomena that were utilized prior to KXK) b.c. 

The Greeks were the first to try to explain why chemical changes occur. By about 400 B.c. they had proposed that all matter was composed of four fundamental substances fire, earth, water, and air. The Greeks also considered the question of whether matter is continuous, and thus infinitely divisible into smaller pieces, or composed of small, indivisible particles. Supporters of the latter position were Demokritos of Abdera (c. 460-c. 370 b.c.) and Leucippos, who used the term atomos (which later became atoms) to describe these ultimate particles. However, because the Greeks had no experiments to test their ideas, no definitive conclusion could be reached about the divisibility of matter. 

The next 2000 years of chemical history were donunated by a pseudoscience called alchemy. Some alchemists were mystics and fakes who were obsessed with the idea of turning cheap metals into gold. However, many alchemists were serious scientists, and this period saw important advances The alchemists discovered several elements and learned to prepare the mineral acids. 

The foundations of modem chemistty were laid in the sixteenth century with the development of systematic metallurgy (extraction of metals from ores) by a German, Georg Bauer (1494-1555), and the medicinal application of minerals by a Swiss alchemist/physician known as Paracelsus (full name Philippus Theophrastus Bom-bastus von Hohenheim [1493-1541]). 

The first chemist to perform truly quantitative experiments was Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who carefully measured the relationship between the pressure and volume of air. When Boyle published his book The Skeptical Chymist in 1661, the quantitative sciences of physics and chemistry were bom. In addition to his results on the quantitative behavior of gases, Boyle s other major contribution to chemistry consisted of his ideas about the chemical elements. Boyle held no preconceived notion about the number of elements. In his view, a substance was an element unless it could be broken down into two or more simpler substances. As Boyle s experimental definition of an element became generally accepted, the list of known elements began to grow, and the Greek system of four elements finally died. Although Boyle was an excellent scientist. 

In this chapter we present very briefly many of the fundamental concepts and some of the vocabulary of chemistry plus something about how the science developed. Depending on your specific background in chemistry, much of this material may be review. However, whatever your background, read this chapter carefully to be sure this material is fresh in your mind as we pursue the study of reaction chemistry in Chapters 3 and 4. 

The Greeks were the first to try to explain why chemical changes occur. By about 400 b.c. they had proposed that all matter was composed of four fundamental substances fire, earth, water, and air. The Greeks also considered 

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Kamath, K.V. "A survey of studies on the early history of chemistry in India." MSc thesis, University College, London, 1950(7). 

Caley, E.R. (1967). The early history of chemistry in the service of archaeology. Journal of Chemical Education 44 120-123. 

The first four members of many homologous series often have trival or non-systematic names, many dating back to the early history of chemistry, but from then on they have more systematic names which show how many carbon atoms there are present eg n = 5 is pentane, ( pent meaning five in Greek). Hex means six in Greek, so = 6 = hexane. 

In the early history of chemistry, all chemists found themselves performing analyses of one kind or another. In more recent times, analytical procedures have become much more sophisticated, and analytical chemistry has in consequence become a specialised branch of the subject. The skills of the analyst are now utilised not only by other chemists, but also by those carrying out investigations in fields such as forensic science, environmental science and the quality control of all manner of products. Some analytical techniques (for example the quantitative elemental analysis of organic compounds and the investigation of molecular structure by physical methods) have been considered in earlier chapters. 

William H. Brock. The Norton History of Chemistry. New York W. W. Norton Co., 1993. Source for Lewis-Langmuir theory early plastics Staudinger controversy available technology carbon dioxide emissions, but relatively clean technology. 

The classic problem of the silicon-silicon double bond dates back at least to the early part of this century, when F. S. Kipping and his students attempted unsuccessfully to synthesize disilenes. Evidence for the probable transient existence of disilenes began to appear in the 1970s, but it was the isolation of the stable disilene 1 in 19811 that opened up modem disilene chemistry. The early history of this discovery has been recounted in a review2 several other reviews covering Si=Si double bonds have been published.2 5... 

Much confusion in the early history of aqueous transition-metal chemistry stemmed from the inability to distinguish free formula ions (serving merely as solvent-separated counterions) from those that remain in direct coordinated contact with... 

Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, 1737-1810. Professor of chemistry, and later professor of divinity, at Cambridge. Between 1768 and 1781 he published a collection of chemical essays on water, air, coal, lead, zinc, salt, saltpeter, and other common substances. He gave an excellent account of the early history of zinc... 

Banks. R.E. in Fluorine - The First Hundred Years Banks, R. E. Sharp. D.W.A. Tatlow. J.C., Eds. Elsevier Sequoia Lausanne, 1986 p 3 the early history of inorganic fluorine chemistry is described here. 

T. Kappe, The early history of calixarene chemistry ,. /. Inclusion Phenom. Mol. Recognit. Chem., 1994,19, 3-15 (reprinted in Calixarenes, ed. Z. Asfari, J. Vicens and J. McB. Harrowfield, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, 1995). 

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