The Foundation of Organic Chemistry

The alchemists and early chemists often worked with materials such as blood, saliva, urine, egg-white, gum, etc. One of the first organic compounds obtained in a fairly pure state was alcohol (ethanol). It was prepared by distillation in Europe in the twelfth century, and it may also have been familiar to the Arab alchemists. Ethanol had also been obtained many centuries earlier in China, both by distillation and by removing the water from a dilute solution by freezing. In the sixteenth century, the products of the reaction of alcohol with each of the three mineral acids had been prepared. Before 1780 only four organic acids were known formic, acetic, benzoic, and succinic. Around this time, Scheele isolated several more. 

The increasing number of carbon compounds being discovered led to attempts to rationalise and understand the mass of facts they presented. It was chemists in France and Germany who were most prominent in this task, although important contributions were also made by a small number in Great Britain and by the Swede Berzelius. 

Wohler wrote to Berzelius I can make urea without the necessity of kidney, or even an animal, whether man or dog. However, he made no claim to have disproved vitalism, and both the ammonia and the cyanic acid that he used had been derived from natural sources. The importance of Wohler s urea synthesis was that both ammonium cyanate and urea had the same composition, and it therefore provided an early example of isomerism. 

Wohler (Rgure 8.1) was the son of a vetennafy surgeon. He studied medicine but decided to devote Ns life to chemistry. After graduating in 1823, he spent one year working with Berzelius in Sweden and then returned to Germany. 

Dumas Rgure 8.4) was born in the small French town of Ala s where he was apprenticed to an apothecary at the age of 15. However, he wished to obtain a proper scientific education, o he went to Geneva to attend lectures on chemistry, physics and botany, and in 1823 he moved to Paris to complete his chemtcai studies. Within a few years he had become the most prominent chemist in the country, and a leading member of the French Academy of Sciences. Like Liebig, he estabiished a teaching laboratory, but he had to finance it himsell After the political upheavals of 1848 his income from his teaching posts was reduced and he was forced to dose the laboratory. He then played an important part in public affairs and became Minister of Education. 

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The existence and stability of homologous series of compounds lie at the foundations of organic chemistry. The systematic variation of properties within the saturated and unsaturated series, both linear and cyclic, provides a firm basis for the development and criticism of stereochemical and thermochemical concepts, and for theories of chemical reactivity. 

The foundations of organic chemistry date from the mid-1700s, when chemistry was evolving from an alchemist s art into a modern science. At... 

The Foundation of Organic Chemistry ORGANIC ANALYSIS AND ORGANIC FORMULAE... 

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