Paul Sabatier (November 5, 1854 – August 14, 1941) was a French chemist, born at Carcassonne. He taught science classes most of his life before he became Dean of the Faculty of Science in 1905.

Sabatier's earliest research concerned the thermochemistry of sulfur and metallic sulfates, the subject for the thesis leading to his doctorate. In Toulouse, he continued his physical and chemical investigations to sulfides, chlorides, chromates and copper compounds. He also studied the oxides of nitrogen and nitrosodisulfonic acid and its salts and carried out fundamental research on partition coefficients and absorption spectra.

Sabatier greatly facilitated the industrial use of hydrogenation. In 1897, he discovered that the introduction of a trace of nickel as a catalyst facilitated the addition of hydrogen to molecules of carbon compounds.

Sabatier is best known for the Sabatier process and his works such as La Catalyse en Chimie Orgarnique (Catalysis in organic chemistry) which was published in 1913. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with fellow Frenchman Victor Grignard in 1912.

Sabatier was married with four daughters, one of whom wed the famous Italian chemist Emilio Pomilio.

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Fritz Haber (9 December 1868 – 29 January 1934) was a German chemist, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his development of synthetic ammonia, important for fertilizers and explosives. He is also credited as the "father of chemical warfare" for his work developing and deploying chlorine and other poison gases during World War I; this role is thought to have provoked his wife to commit suicide.

Despite his contributions to the German war effort, Haber was forced to emigrate from Germany in 1933 by the Nazis because of his Jewish background; many of his relatives were killed by the Nazis in concentration camps, possibly by another of his creations, Zyklon B. He died in the process of emigration.

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Alfred Bernhard Nobel (help·info) (October 21, 1833, Stockholm, Sweden—December 10, 1896, Sanremo, Italy) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, armaments manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite. He owned Bofors, a major armaments manufacturer, which he had redirected from its previous role as an iron and steel mill. In his last will, he used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes. The synthetic element Nobelium was named after him.
Personal background

Nobel, a descendant of the seventeenth century scientist, Olaus Rudbeck (1630-1708), was the third son of Immanuel Nobel (1801-1872) and Andriette Ahlsell Nobel (1805-1889). Born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833, he went with his family in 1842 to St. Petersburg, where his father (who had invented modern plywood) started a "torpedo" works. Alfred studied chemistry for professor Nikolay Nikolaevich Zinin. In 1859 the factory was left to the care of the second son, Ludvig Nobel (1831-1888), by whom it was greatly enlarged, and Alfred, returning to America with his family and his father after the bankruptcy of their family business, devoted himself to the study of explosives, and especially to the safe manufacture and use of nitroglycerine (discovered in 1847 by Ascanio Sobrero, one of his fellow-students under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Torino). Several explosions were reported at their family-owned factory in Heleneborg, and a disastrous one in 1864 killed Alfred's younger brother Emil and several other workers.

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been honoring men and women from all corners of the globe for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for work in peace. The foundations for the prize were laid in 1895 when Alfred Nobel wrote his last will, leaving much of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize.

Alfred Nobel also wrote Nemesis, a prose tragedy in four acts about Beatrice Cenci, partly inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley's blank verse tragedy in five acts The Cenci, was printed when he was dying, and the whole stock except for three copies was destroyed immediately after his death, being regarded as scandalous and blasphemous. The first surviving edition (bilingual Swedish-Esperanto) was published in Sweden in 2003. The play has been translated to Slovenian via the Esperanto version.

Alfred Nobel is buried in Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm.

Dynamite

Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert substance like kieselguhr (diatomaceous earth) it became safer and more convenient to manipulate, and this mixture he patented in 1867 as dynamite. Nobel demonstrated his explosive for the first time that year, at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey, England.

He next combined nitroglycerin with another explosive, gun-cotton, and obtained a transparent, jelly-like substance, which was a still more powerful explosive than dynamite. Gelignite, or Blasting gelatin as it was called, was patented in 1876, and was followed by a host of similar combinations, modified by the addition of potassium nitrate, and various other substances.

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Paul Karrer was born in Moscow on April 21, 1889. His parents, Paul Karrer and Julie Lerch, were Swiss nationals and in 1892 the family returned to Switzerland where he received his early education at Wildegg and at the grammar school in Lenzburg, Aarau, where he matriculated in 1908. He studied chemistry at University of Zurich under Professor Alfred Werner and after gaining his Ph.D. in 1911, he spent a further year as assistant in the Chemical Institute. In 1912 he took a post as chemist with Paul Ehrlich at the Georg Speyer Haus, Frankfurt-am-Main; he left Frankfurt six years later on his election as reader at University of Zurich. In 1919 he became Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Chemical Institute.

His early researches involved the preparation and investigation into the properties of complex metal compounds but his most important work has concerned plant pigments, particularly the yellow carotenoids. He was responsible for elucidating the chemical structure of the carotenoids and he also showed that some of these substances are transformed in the animal body into vitamin A. His work in this field led, in 1930, to the establishment of the correct constitutional formula for b-carotene, the chief precursor of vitamin A; this, the first time that the structure of a vitamin or provitamin had been established, in turn led to the clarification of the structure of vitamin A itself. Later, he confirmed the structure ascribed to ascorbic acid (vitamin C) by Albert von Szent-Györgyi and he extended his researches into the vitamin B2 and E fields. His important contributions to the chemistry of the flavins led to identification of lactoflavin as part of the complex originally thought to be vitamin B2.

Professor Karrer has published over 1,000 scientific papers in the various fields of organic chemistry, especially concerning vitamins A, B2, C, E and K, co-enzymes, carotenoids and other plant pigments, curare and other alkaloids, amino acids, carbohydrates and organo-arsenic compounds. His Lehrbuch der Organischen Chemie (1930) has passed through 13 editions and has been translated in full into English, Italian, Spanish, French, Polish and Japanese. His monograph on carotenoids (1948) has also been translated into English.

Karrer was President of the 14th International Congress on Pure and Applied Chemistry (Zurich, 1955). He has received honorary doctorate degrees from universities in Europe and America; they include Dr.med. Basle, Breslau, Lausanne and Zurich; Ph.D. Lyons, Paris, Sofia, London, Turin, Brussels and Rio de Janeiro; and Dr.Pharm. Madrid and Strasbourg. He has been awarded the Marcel Benoist Prize and the Cannizzaro Prize and he is a full member or honorary, corresponding or associate member of numerous chemical and biochemical societies throughout the world. These include the Academie des Sciences (Paris); the Royal Society (London); National Academy of Science (Washington); Royal Academy of Sciences (Stockholm); the National Academy (Rome); Royal Academy of Belgium; the Indian Academy of Science; the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and the Chemical Societies of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, India and Austria.

Karrer married Helena Froelich in 1914. They have two sons.

From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1966

This autobiography/biography was first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
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Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM PC FRS (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937), was a nuclear physicist from New Zealand. He was known as the "father" of nuclear physics, he pioneered the orbital theory of the atom, in his discovery of Rutherford scattering off the nucleus with the gold foil experiment.


Early years

Rutherford was born at Spring Grove, (now in Brightwater), near Nelson, New Zealand. He studied at Nelson College and won a scholarship to study at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand. In 1895, after gaining his BA, MA and BSc, and doing two years of research at the forefront of electrical technology, Rutherford travelled to England for postgraduate study at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (1895-1898), and was resident at Trinity College. There, he briefly held the world record for the distance over which electromagnetic waves could be detected. During the investigation of radioactivity he coined the terms alpha, beta, and gamma rays.


Middle years

In 1898 Rutherford was appointed to the chair of physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he did the work which gained him the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He had demonstrated that radioactivity was the spontaneous disintegration of atoms. He noticed that in a sample of radioactive material it invariably took the same amount of time for half the sample to decay — its "half-life" — and created a practical application for this phenomenon using this constant rate of decay as a clock, which could then be used to help determine the actual age of the Earth that turned out to be much older than most scientists at the time believed.

In 1907 Rutherford took the chair of physics at the University of Manchester. There he directed the Geiger-Marsden experiment that discovered the nuclear nature of atoms and was the world's first successful "alchemist": he converted nitrogen into oxygen. While working with Niels Bohr (who postulated that electrons moved in specific orbits) Rutherford theorized about the existence of neutrons, which could somehow compensate for the repelling effect of the positive charges of protons by causing an attractive nuclear force and thus keeping the nuclei from breaking apart.


Later years

Lord Rutherford of Nelson on the New Zealand 100 dollar note

He was knighted in 1914. In 1917 he returned to the Cavendish as Director. Under him, Nobel Prizes were awarded to Chadwick for discovering the neutron (in 1932), Cockcroft and Walton for splitting the atom using a particle accelerator and Appleton for demonstrating the existence of the ionosphere. He was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1925 and in 1931 was created Baron Rutherford of Nelson of Cambridge in the County of Cambridge, a title which became extinct upon his death.


Impact and legacy

Rutherford was known as "the crocodile". Engraving by Eric Gill at the original Cavendish site in Cambridge.

His research, along with that of his protege, Sir Mark Oliphant was instrumental in the convening of the Manhattan Project. He is famously quoted as saying: "In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting." He is also reputed to have stated that the idea of using nuclear reaction to generate useful power was "moonshine".


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Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (August 30, 1852 - March 1, 1911) was a Dutch physical and organic chemist and the winner of the inaugural Nobel Prize in chemistry. His research on chemical kinetics, chemical equilibrium, osmotic pressure and crystallography is credited to be his major work. Van 't Hoff helped to found the discipline of physical chemistry as we know it today. He is also considered to be one of the greatest chemists of all time together with French chemists Antoine Lavoisier and Louis Pasteur and German chemist Friedrich Wöhler.

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Robert Boyle (January 25, 1627 – December 30, 1691) was an Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor and early gentleman scientist, noted for his work in physics and chemistry. Although his research and personal philosophy clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, he is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist. Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry.


***Boyle became seriously hurt in a game against the <a href=http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team&op=view&team_id=274793>Claws</a> [-AG]. The IUPAC decided not to use apothecary on him.


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Pierre Curie (Paris, France, May 15, 1859 – April 19, 1906, Paris) was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity.

He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics with his wife, Maria Sk&#322;odowska-Curie (Marie Curie), and Henri Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."

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Early life and work

Pierre was educated at home by his father, and in his early teens showed a strong aptitude for mathematics and geometry. By the age of 18 he had completed the equivalent of a higher degree, but did not proceed immediately to a doctorate due to lack of money. Instead he worked as a laboratory instructor.

In 1880, Pierre and his older brother Jacques demonstrated that an electric potential was generated when crystals were compressed, i.e. piezoelectricity. Shortly afterwards, in 1881, they demonstrated the reverse effect: that crystals could be made to deform when subject to an electric field. Almost all digital electronic circuits now rely on this phenomenon in the form of crystal oscillators.

Prior to his famous doctoral studies on magnetism he designed and perfected an extremely sensitive torsion balance for measuring magnetic coefficients. Variations on this equipment were commonly used by future workers in that area. Pierre Curie studied ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and diamagnetism for his doctoral thesis, and discovered the effect of temperature on paramagnetism which is now known as Curie's law. The material constant in Curie's law is known as the Curie constant. He also discovered that ferromagnetic substances exhibited a critical temperature transition, above which the substances lost their ferromagnetic behaviour. This is now known as the Curie point.

Pierre formulated what is now known as the Curie Dissymmetry Principle: a physical effect cannot have a dissymmetry absent from its efficient cause. For example, a random mixture of sand in zero gravity has no dissymmetry (it is isotropic). Introduce a gravitational field, then there is a dissymmetry because of the direction of the field. Then the sand grains can ‘self-sort’ with the density increasing with depth. But this new arrangement, with the directional arrangement of sand grains, actually reflects the dissymmetry of the gravitational field that causes the separation.

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Work

Pierre worked with his wife Marie Curie in isolating polonium and radium. They were the first to use the term "radioactivity," and were pioneers in its study. Their work, including Marie's celebrated doctoral work, made use of a sensitive piezoelectric electrometer constructed by Pierre and his brother Jacques.

Pierre and one of his students made the first discovery of nuclear energy, by identifying the continuous emission of heat from radium particles. He also investigated the radiation emissions of radioactive substances, and through the use of magnetic fields was able to show that some of the emissions were positively charged, some were negative and some were neutral. These correspond to alpha, beta and gamma radiation.

The curie is a unit of radioactivity (3.7 x 1010 decays per second or 37 gigabecquerels) originally named in honour of Pierre Curie by the Radiology Congress in 1910, after Pierre's death.

Pierre died as a result of a carriage accident in a snow storm while crossing the Rue Dauphine in Paris on April 19, 1906. His head having been crushed under the carriage wheel, he avoided probable death by the radiation exposure that later killed his wife. Both Pierre and Marie were enshrined in the crypt of the Panthéon in Paris in April 1995.

Pierre and Marie Curie's daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and their son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie were also physicists involved in the study of radioactivity, and were also awarded the Nobel prize for their work. Their other daughter Eve wrote her mother's biography. His grand-daughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Paris.

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Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut on December 29, 1800. He was the son of Amasa Goodyear, and the eldest of six children. His father was quite proud of being a descendant of Stephen Goodyear, one of the founders of the colony of New Haven in 1638.

Amasa Goodyear owned a little farm on the neck of land in New Haven which is now known as Oyster Point, and it was here that Charles spent the earliest years of his life. When Charles was quite young, his father secured an interest in a patent for the manufacture of ivory buttons, and looking for a convenient location for a small mill, settled at Naugatuck, Connecticut, where he made use of the valuable water power that is there. Aside from his manufacturing, the elder Goodyear ran a farm, and between farming and manufacturing kept Charles Goodyear busy.

In 1816, Charles left his home and went to Philadelphia to learn the hardware business. He worked industriously until he was twenty-one years old, and then, returning to Connecticut, entered into partnership in his father's business in Naugatuck, where they manufactured not only ivory and metal buttons, but a variety of agricultural implements, which were just beginning to be appreciated by farmers.



In August of 1824 he was united in marriage with Clarissa Beecher, a woman of supposedly remarkable strength of character and kindness of disposition; and one of the greatest assistance to the impulsive inventor. Two years later he moved to Philadelphia, and there opened a hardware store. His specialties were the valuable agricultural implements that his firm had been manufacturing, and after the first distrust of home made goods had worn away — for all agricultural implements were imported from England at that time — he found himself established at the head of a successful business.

This continued to increase until it seemed that he was to be a wealthy man. Between 1829 and 1830 he broke down in health, being troubled with dyspepsia. At the same time came the failure of a number of business houses that seriously embarrassed his firm. They struggled on, however, for some time, but were finally obliged to fail. The ten years that followed were full of bitter struggles and trials. Under the law that existed he was imprisoned time after time for debts, even while he was trying to perfect inventions that should pay off his indebtedness.




Between the years 1831 and 1832, Goodyear began to hear about gum elastic and very carefully examined every article that appeared in the newspapers relative to this new material. The Roxbury Rubber Company, of Boston, had been for some time experimenting with the gum, and believed it had found means for manufacturing goods from it. It had a large plant and was sending its goods all over the country. It was some of Roxbury's goods that first attracted Goodyear's attention. Soon after this, Goodyear visited New York, and his attention went to life preservers, and it struck him that the tube used for inflation was not very effective nor well-made. Therefore, upon returning to Philadelphia, he made some tubes and brought them back to New York and showed them to the manager of the Roxbury Rubber Company.

This gentleman was pleased with the ingenuity that Goodyear had shown in manufacturing the tubes. He confessed to Goodyear that the business was on the verge of ruin, and that his products had to be tested for a year before it could be determined if they were perfect or not. To their surprise, thousands of dollars worth of goods that they had determined to be of good quality were being returned, the gum having rotted, making them useless. Goodyear at once made up his mind to experiment on this gum and see if he could overcome the problems with these rubber products.

However, when he returned to Philadelphia, a creditor had him arrested and thrown into prison. While there, he tried his first experiments with India rubber. The gum was inexpensive then, and by heating it and working it in his hands, he managed to incorporate in it a certain amount of magnesia which produced a beautiful white compound and appeared to take away the stickiness.

He thought he had discovered the secret, and through the kindness of friends was enabled to improve his invention in New Haven. The first thing that he made was shoes, and he used his own house for a grinding room, calender room, and vulcanizing department, with the help of his wife and children. His compound at this time consisted of India rubber, lampblack, and magnesia, the whole dissolved in turpentine and spread upon the flannel cloth which served as the lining for the shoes. It was not long, however, before he discovered that the gum, even treated this way, became sticky. His creditors, completely discouraged, decided that he would not be allowed to go further in his research.

Goodyear, however, had no mind to stop here in his experiments. Selling his furniture and placing his family in a quiet boarding place, he went to New York and in an attic, helped by a friendly druggist, continued his experiments. His next step was to compound the rubber with magnesia and then boil it in quicklime and water. This appeared to solve the problem. At once it was noticed abroad that he had treated India rubber to lose its stickiness, and he received international acclamation. He seemed on the high road to success, until one day he noticed that a drop of weak acid, falling on the cloth, neutralized the alkali and immediately caused the rubber to become soft again. This proved to him that his process was not a successful one. He therefore continued experimenting, and after preparing his mixtures in his attic in New York, would walk three miles to a mill in Greenwich Village to try various experiments.

In the line of these, he discovered that rubber dipped in nitric acid formed a surface cure, and he made many products with this acid cure which were held in high regard, and he even received a letter of commendation from Andrew Jackson.

The constant and varied experiments that Goodyear went through affected his health, and at one time he came near being suffocated by gas generated in his laboratory. Goodyear survived, but the resulting fever came close to taking his life.

Together with a new business partner, he built up a factory and began to make clothing, life preservers, rubber shoes, and a great variety of rubber goods. They also had a large factory with special machinery, built at Staten Island, where he moved his family and again had a home of his own. Just about this time, when everything looked bright, the panic of 1837 came and swept away the entire fortune of his associate and left Goodyear penniless.

His next move was to go to Boston, where he became acquainted with J. Haskins, of the Roxbury Rubber Company. Goodyear found him to be a good friend, who lent him money and stood by him when no one would have anything to do with the visionary inventor. A man named Mr. Chaffee was also exceedingly kind and ever ready to lend a listening ear to his plans, and to also assist him in a pecuniary way. About this time it occurred to Mr. Chaffee that much of the trouble that they had experienced in working India rubber might come from the solvent that was used. He therefore invented a huge machine for doing the mixing by mechanical means. The goods that were made in this way were beautiful to look at, and it appeared, as it had before, that all difficulties were overcome.

Goodyear discovered a new method for making rubber shoes and received a patent which he sold to the Providence Company in Rhodes Island. However, the secret of making the rubber so that it would stand heat and cold and acids, however, had not been discovered, and the goods were constantly growing sticky and decomposing and being returned.




In 1838, Goodyear met Nathaniel Hayward in Woburn, Massachusetts, where Hayward was running a factory. Some time after this Goodyear himself moved to Woburn, all the time continuing his experiments. He was very much interested in Hayward's sulfur experiments for drying rubber. Hayward told Goodyear that he had used sulfur in rubber manufacturing.

The circumstances attending the discovery of his celebrated process is thus described by Mr. Goodyear himself in his book, "Gum Elastic and Its Varieties, with a detailed account of its application and uses and of the Discovery of Vulcanization." Perhaps showing humility, Goodyear used only third person references when speaking about himself.

Goodyear tried the experiment with a similar material over an open flame, and saw that the gum elastic was charred, but on the edge of the charred areas were portions that were not charred, but were instead perfectly cured. This process was refined to become the vulcanizing process.

The inventor himself admitted that the discovery of the vulcanizing process was not the direct result of the scientific method, but claims that it was not accidental. Rather it was the result of application and observation.

Now that Goodyear was sure that he had the key to the intricate puzzle that he had worked over for so many years, he began at once to tell his friends about it and to try to secure capital, but they had listened so many times that his efforts were futile. For a number of years he struggled and experimented and worked along in a small way, his family suffering with himself the pangs of the extremest poverty. At last he went to New York and showed some of his samples to William Ryder, who, with his brother Emory, at once appreciated the value of the discovery and started in to manufacturing. Even here Goodyear's bad luck seemed to follow him, for the Ryder Bros. had failed and it was impossible to continue the business.

He had, however, started a small factory at Springfield, Massachusetts, and his brother-in-law, Mr. De Forest, who was a wealthy woolen manufacturer, took Ryder's place. The work of making the invention practical was continued. In 1844 it was so far perfected that Goodyear felt it safe to take out a patent. The factory at Springfield was run by his brothers, Nelson and Henry. In 1843 Henry started one in Naugatuck, and in 1844 introduced mechanical mixing in place of the mixture by the use of solvents.



In the year 1852 Goodyear went to Europe, a trip that he had long planned, and saw Hancock, then in the employ of Charles Macintosh & Co. Hancock admitted in evidence that the first piece of vulcanized rubber he ever saw came from America, but claimed to have reinvented vulcanization and secured patents in Great Britain, but it is a remarkable fact that Charles Goodyear's French patent was the first publication in Europe of this discovery.

In 1852 a French company (Aigle) was licensed by Mr. Goodyear to make shoes, and a great deal of interest was felt in the new business. In 1855 the French emperor gave to Charles Goodyear the Grand Medal of Honor and decorated him with the Cross of the Legion of Honor in recognition of his services as a public benefactor. Later, the French courts subsequently set aside his French patents on the ground of the importation of vulcanized goods from America by licenses under the United States patents.

In 1898, after his death, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company was founded and named after Goodyear by Frank Seiberling.



Goodyear died July 1, 1860, while traveling to see his dying daughter. After arriving in New York, he was informed that she had already died. He collapsed and was taken to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, where he died at the age of fifty-nine.


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Sir James Dewar (September 20, 1842 – March 27, 1923) was a Scottish chemist and physicist.

He was the youngest of six boys, and lost his parents at the age of 15. He was born in Kincardine-on-Forth and was educated at Dollar Academy and the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated. Later he became professor at the University of Cambridge in 1875 and became a member of the Royal Institution in 1877. He developed a chemical formula for benzene, now called Dewar benzene, and performed extensive work in spectroscopy for more than 25 years. In 1891 he discovered a process to produce liquid oxygen in industrial quantities. He developed an insulating bottle, the Dewar flask, still named after him, to study low temperature gas phenomena. He also used this bottle to transport liquid gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen.


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Paul Hermann Müller was born at Olten, Solothurn, Switzerland, on January 12th, 1899, and his early childhood was spent at Lenzburg, Aargau, the birthplace of his father who was an employee of the Swiss Federal Railway. The family moved to Basle where Paul attended primary school and, later, Free Evangelical elementary and secondary schools. He commenced work in 1916 as a laboratory assistant at Dreyfus and Company and the following year he joined Lonza A.G. as an assistant chemist in the Scientific-Industrial Laboratory of their electrical plant, gaining a wealth of practical knowledge which later stood him in good stead in his career as an industrial chemist. He matriculated in 1918 and returned to school to obtain his diploma (1919) which entitled him to attend Basle University: he studied there under Professors Fichter and Rupe for his Doctorate which he received in 1925. He began his career with J. R. Geigy A.G., Basle, in May, 1925, to become Deputy Director of Scientific Research on Substances for Plant Protection in 1946.

Müller's first researches concerned the chemical and electrochemical oxidation of m-xylidine, and his early work at J. R. Geigy concerned vegetable dyes and natural tanning agents. He devoted some of his spare time to research on tanning agents and he invented synthetic agents which tanned hides pure white - they were, however, not fast to light. Later, in 1930, he developed the light-fast synthetic tanning agents Irgatan FL and Irgatan FLT. He worked on disinfectants for a short while, on moth-proofing agents for textiles, on pesticides in general, and he developed Graminone, a mercury-free seed disinfectant, before, in 1935, he started his researches on new synthetic contact insecticides.

Four years of intensive work led to the synthesis of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and the basic Swiss patent was granted in 1940. This compound was originally made in 1873 by an Austrian student, but had never received any particular attention. Field trials now showed it to be effective not only against the common housefly, but also against a wide variety of pests, including the louse, Colorado beetle, and mosquito; and two products based on DDT, Gesarol and Neocide, were marketed in 1942. These formulations were brought to the notice of British and American medical entomologists at a time, during World War II, when supplies of pyrethrum were rapidly falling short of demand. Production was soon established on both sides of the Atlantic and they proved to be of enormous value in combatting typhus and malaria - malaria was, in fact, completely eradicated from many island areas. These compounds have also had great value in agricultural entomology and they have provided a great stimulus in the search for other insecticides.

Müller has had several papers on his work published in Helvetica Chimica Acta. He married Friedel Rüegsegger in 1927. They have two sons, Heinrich (b. 1929) and Niklaus (b. 1933), and one daughter, Margaretha (b. 1934), all married.


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Sir William Ramsay (October 2, 1852 – July 23, 1916) was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 (along with Lord Rayleigh who received the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year for the discovery of argon).

Ramsay was born in Glasgow, the son of William Ramsay, C.E. and Catherine, née Robertson. He was a nephew of the geologist Sir Andrew Ramsay.

He studied at the University of Glasgow under Thomas Anderson and then went to study in Germany at the University of Tübingen with Fittig where his doctoral thesis was entitled "Investigations in the Toluic and Nitrotoluic Acids". He returned to Glasgow as Anderson's assistant at the Anderson College. He was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the University College of Bristol in 1879 and married Margaret Buchanan in 1881. In the same year he became the Principal of the Bristol and somehow managed to combine that with active research both in organic chemistry and on gases.

In 1887 he succeeded Alexander Williamson to the prestigious chair of Chemistry at University College London. It was here that his most celebrated discoveries were made. As early as 1885–1890 he published several notable papers on the oxides of nitrogen developing the skills that he would need for his subsequent work.

On the evening of April 19th 1894 Ramsay attended a lecture given by Lord Rayleigh. Rayleigh had noticed a discrepancy between the density of nitrogen made by chemical synthesis and nitrogen isolated from the air by removal of the other known components. After a short discussion he and Ramsay decided to follow this up. By August Ramsay could write to Rayleigh to announce that he had isolated a heavy component of air previously unknown which did not appear to have any obvious chemical reactivity. He named the gas "argon". In the years that followed he discovered neon, krypton, and xenon. He also isolated helium which had been observed in the spectrum of the sun but had not been found on earth. In 1910 he also isolated and characterized radon.


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Otto Wallach (27 March 1847 at Königsberg - 26 February 1931 at Göttingen) was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1910 for work on alicyclic compounds. He was responsible for naming the terpene, pinene, and for undertaking the first systematic study of pinene&#8593; . He also proposed that terpenes can be regarded as oligomers of isoprene; this is now known as the isoprene rule, and it assisted in the elucidation of the structures of many terpenes.

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Early life

Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon to Herman Henry William Pauling (1876–1910) of Concordia, Missouri; and Lucy Isabelle Darling (1881–1926) of Lonerock, Oregon. Herman was an unsuccessful druggist who moved his family to and from a number of different cities in Oregon from 1903 to 1909, finally returning to Portland that year. Herman died in 1910 of a perforated ulcer, and Isabelle was left to care for Linus and two younger siblings: Pauline Pauling (1901-2003) who married Thomas Joseph Ney (1881-1963) of Millville, New Jersey; and Frances Lucille Pauling (1904–?).

Pauling was a voracious reader as a child, and at one point his father wrote a letter to a local paper inviting suggestions of additional books that would occupy his time. A friend, Lloyd Jeffress, had a small chemistry laboratory in his bedroom when Pauling was in grammar school, and Jeffress' laboratory experiments inspired Pauling to plan to become a chemical engineer.

In high school, Pauling continued to experiment in chemistry, borrowing much of the equipment and materials from an abandoned steel company near which his grandfather worked as a night watchman.

Pauling was not allowed to take a required American history course and did not qualify for his high school diploma a year early. The school awarded him the diploma 45 years later [1] after he had won two Nobel Prizes.


College and university

Pauling graduated from Oregon Agricultural College in 1922.

In 1917, Pauling entered the Oregon Agricultural College (OAC) in Corvallis, now Oregon State University. While at OAC, Pauling was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. Because of financial needs, he had to work full-time while attending a full schedule of classes. After his second year, he planned to take a job in Portland to help support his mother, but the college offered him a position teaching quantitative analysis (a course Pauling had just finished taking as a student). This allowed him to continue his studies at OAC.

In his last two years at OAC, Pauling became aware of the work of Gilbert N. Lewis and Irving Langmuir on the electronic structure of atoms and their bonding to form molecules. He decided to focus his research on how the physical and chemical properties of substances are related to the structure of the atoms of which they are composed, becoming one of the founders of the new science of quantum chemistry.

In 1922, Pauling graduated from OAC with a degree in chemical engineering and went to graduate school at the California Institute of Technology ("Caltech") in Pasadena, California under the guidance of Roscoe G. Dickinson. His graduate research involved the use of X-ray diffraction to determine crystal structure. He published seven papers on the crystal structure of minerals while he was at Caltech. He received his Ph. D. in physical chemistry and mathematical physics, summa cum laude, in 1925.


Marriage

During his senior year, Linus Pauling taught junior classes in "Chemistry for Home Economic Majors" [9]. In one of these classes he met Ava Helen Miller, whom he married on June 17, 1923; they had three sons (Crellin, Linus, Peter) and a daughter (Linda).


Early scientific career

Pauling later traveled to Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship to study under German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, Danish physicist Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, and Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in Zürich. All three were experts working in the new field of quantum mechanics and other branches of physics. While he was studying at the Oregon Agricultural College, Pauling was first exposed to the idea of quantum theory and quantum mechanics. He became interested in seeing how it might help in the understanding of his chosen field of interest, the electronic structure of atoms and molecules. In Europe, Pauling was also exposed to one of the first quantum mechanical analyses of bonding in the hydrogen molecule, done by Walter Heitler and Fritz London. Pauling devoted the two years of his European trip to this work and decided to make this the focus of his future research. He became one of the first scientists in the field of quantum chemistry and a pioneer in the application of quantum theory to the structure of molecules. In 1927, he took a new position as an assistant professor at Caltech in theoretical chemistry.

Pauling began his faculty career at Caltech with a very productive five years, both continuing with his X-ray crystal studies and performing quantum mechanical calculations on atoms and molecules. He published approximately fifty papers in those five years and created five rules now known as Pauling's Rules. In 1929, he was promoted to associate professor, and in 1930, to full professor. By 1931, the American Chemical Society awarded Pauling the Langmuir Prize for the most significant work in pure science by a person 30 years of age or younger. In 1932, Pauling published what he regarded as his most important paper, in which he first laid out the concept of hybridization of atomic orbitals and analyzed the tetravalency of the carbon atom.

At Caltech, Pauling struck a close friendship with theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who was spending part of his research and teaching schedule away from Berkeley at Caltech every year. The two men planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond; apparently Oppenheimer would supply the mathematics and Pauling would interpret the results. However, this relationship soured when Pauling began to suspect that Oppenheimer was probably becoming too close to Pauling's wife, Ava Helen. Once, when Pauling was at work, Oppenheimer had come to their place and blurted out an invitation to Ava Helen to join him on a tryst to Mexico. Although she flatly refused, she reported this incident to Pauling. This, and her apparent nonchalance about the incident, disquieted him, and he immediately cut off his relationship with the Berkeley professor, leading to a coolness between them that would last their lives. Although Oppenheimer did invite Pauling to be the head of the Chemistry Division of the atomic bomb project, Pauling refused, saying that he was a pacifist.

In the summer of 1930, Pauling made another European trip, learning about the use of electrons in diffraction studies similar to the ones he had performed with X-rays. With a student of his, L. O. Brockway, he built an electron diffraction instrument at Caltech and used it to study the molecular structure of a large number of chemical substances.

Linus Pauling introduced the concept of electronegativity in 1932. Using the various properties of molecules, such as the energy required to break bonds and the dipole moments of molecules, he established a scale and an associated numerical value for most of the elements, the Pauling Electronegativity Scale, which is useful in predicting the nature of bonds between atoms in molecules.


Work on the nature of the chemical bond

Linus Pauling in 1954

In the 1930s he began publishing papers on the nature of the chemical bond, leading to his famous textbook on the subject published in 1939. It is based primarily on his work in this area that he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances". Pauling summarized his work on the chemical bond in The Nature of the Chemical Bond, one of the most influential chemistry books ever published. In the 30 years since its first edition was published in 1939, the book had been cited more than 16,000 times. Even today, many modern scientific papers and articles in important journals cite this work, more than half a century after first publication.

Part of Pauling's work on the nature of the chemical bond led to his introduction of the concept of orbital hybridization. While it is normal to think of the electrons in an atom as being described by orbitals of types such as s, p, etc., it turns out that in describing the bonding in molecules, it is better to construct functions that partake of some of the properties of each. Thus the one 2s and three 2p orbitals in a carbon atom can be combined to make four equivalent orbitals (called sp3 hybrid orbitals), which would be the appropriate orbitals to describe carbon compounds such as methane, or the 2s orbital may be combined with two of the 2p orbitals to make three equivalent orbitals (called sp2 hybrid orbitals), with the remaining 2p orbital unhybridized, which would be the appropriate orbitals to describe certain unsaturated carbon compounds such as ethylene. Other hybridization schemes are also found in other types of molecules.

Another area which he explored was the relationship between ionic bonding, where electrons are transferred between atoms, and covalent bonding where electrons are shared between atoms on an equal basis. Pauling showed that these were merely extremes, between which most actual cases of bonding fall. It was here especially that Pauling's electronegativity concept was particularly useful; the electronegativity difference between a pair of atoms will be the surest predictor of the degree of ionicity of the bond.

The third of the topics that Pauling attacked under the overall heading of "the nature of the chemical bond" was the accounting of the structure of aromatic hydrocarbons, particularly the prototype, benzene. The best description of benzene had been made by the German chemist Friedrich Kekulé. He had treated it as a rapid interconversion between two structures, each with alternating single and double bonds, but with the double bonds of one structure in the locations where the single bonds were in the other. Pauling showed that a proper description based on quantum mechanics was an intermediate structure which was a blend of each. The structure was a superposition of structures rather than a rapid interconversion between them. The name "resonance" was later applied to this phenomenon. In a sense, this phenomenon resembles that of hybridization, described earlier, because it involves combining more than one electronic structure to achieve an intermediate result.


Work on structure of the atomic nucleus

On September 16, 1952, Linus Pauling opened a new research notebook with these words "I have decided to attack the problem of the structure of nuclei" (see his actual notes at Oregon State Special Collections). On October 15, 1965, Pauling published his Close-Packed Spheron Model of the atomic nucleus in two well respected journals, Science, and Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.[2] For nearly three decades, until his death in 1994, Pauling published numerous papers on his spheron cluster model.

No modern text books on nuclear physics discuss the Pauling Spheron Model of the Atomic Nucleus, yet it provides a unique perspective, well published in the leading journals of science, on how fundamental "clusters of nucleons" can form shell structure in agreement with recognized theory of quantum mechanics. Pauling was well versed in quantum mechanics--he coauthored one of the first textbooks on the subject (Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry by Linus Pauling, E. Bright Wilson, 1935). The Pauling spheron nucleon clusters include the deuteron[NP], helion [PNP], and triton [NPN]. Even-even nuclei were described as being composed of clusters of alpha particles, as has often been done for light nuclei. He made an effort to derive the shell structure of nuclei from the Platonic solids rather than starting from an independent particle model as in the usual shell model. It was sometimes said at that time that this work received more attention than it would have if it had been done by a less famous person, but more likely Pauling was taking a unique approach to understanding the relatively new discovery in the late 1940's of Maria Goeppert-Mayer of structure within the nucleus. In an interview Pauling commented on his model..."Now recently, I have been trying to determine detailed structures of atomic nuclei by analyzing the ground state and excited state vibrational bends, as observed experimentally. From reading the physics literature, Physical Review Letters and other journals, I know that many physicists are interested in atomic nuclei, but none of them, so far as I have been able to discover, has been attacking the problem in the same way that I attack it. So I just move along at my own speed, making calculations..."

Work on biological molecules



In the mid-1930s, Pauling decided to strike out into new areas of interest. Early in his career, he was uninterested in studying molecules of biological importance. But as Caltech was developing a new strength in biology, and Pauling interacted with such great biologists as Thomas Hunt Morgan, Theodosius Dobzhanski, Calvin Bridges, and Alfred Sturtevant, he changed his mind and switched to the study of biomolecules. His first work in this area involved the structure of hemoglobin. He demonstrated that the hemoglobin molecule changes structure when it gains or loses an oxygen atom. As a result of this observation, he decided to conduct a more thorough study of protein structure in general. He returned to his earlier use of X-ray diffraction analysis. But protein structures were far less amenable to this technique than the crystalline minerals of his former work. The best X-ray pictures of proteins in the 1930s had been made by the British crystallographer William Astbury, but when Pauling tried, in 1937, to account for Astbury's observations quantum mechanically, he could not.

It took eleven years for Pauling to explain the problem: his mathematical analysis was correct, but Astbury's pictures were taken in such a way that the protein molecules were tilted from their expected positions. Pauling had formulated a model for the structure of hemoglobin in which atoms were arranged in a helical pattern, and applied this idea to proteins in general.

In 1951, based on the structures of amino acids and peptides and the planarity of the peptide bond, Pauling and colleagues correctly proposed the alpha helix and beta sheet as the primary structural motifs in protein secondary structure. This work exemplified his ability to think unconventionally; central to the structure was the unorthodox assumption that one turn of the helix may well contain a non-integral number of amino acid residues.

Pauling then suggested a helical structure for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA); however, his model contained several basic mistakes, including a proposal of neutral phosphate groups, an idea that conflicted with the acidity of DNA.[5] Sir Lawrence Bragg had been disappointed that Pauling had won the race to find the alpha helix. Bragg's team had made a fundamental error in making their models of protein by not recognizing the planar nature of the peptide bond. When it was learned at the Cavendish Laboratory that Pauling was working on molecular models of the structure of DNA, Watson and Crick were allowed to make a molecular model of DNA using unpublished data from Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College. Early in 1953 James D. Watson and Francis Crick proposed a correct structure for the DNA double helix. One of the impediments facing Pauling in this work was that he did not have access to the high quality X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin, which Watson and Crick had seen. He planned to attend a conference in England, where he might have been shown the photos, but he could not do so because his passport was withheld at the time by the State Department, on suspicions that he had Communist sympathies. This was at the start of the McCarthy period in the United States.

Pauling also studied enzyme reactions and was among the first ones to point out that enzymes bring about reactions by stabilizing the transition state of the reaction, a view which is central to understanding their mechanism of action. He was also among the first scientists to postulate that the binding of antibodies to antigens would be due to a complementarity between their structures. Along the same lines, with the physicist turned biologist Max Delbruck, he wrote an early paper arguing that DNA replication was likely to be due to complementarity, rather than similarity, as suggested by a few researchers. This was made clear in the model of the structure of DNA that Watson and Crick discovered.

Molecular genetics

In November 1949 Linus Pauling, Harvey Itano, S. J. Singer and Ibert Wells published in the journal Science the first proof that a human disease was associated with a change in a specific protein[6]. Using electrophoresis, they demonstrated that individuals with sickle cell disease had a modified hemoglobin in their red blood cells, and that individuals with the sickle cell trait, upon electrophoresis, had both the normal and abnormal hemoglobin. This was the first demonstration of a specific protein associated with a human disease, and the Mendelian inheritance of a change in that specific protein - the dawn of molecular genetics.

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Activism

Pauling had been practically apolitical until World War II, but the war changed his life profoundly, and he became a peace activist. During the beginning of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer invited him to be in charge of the Chemistry division of the project, but he declined, saying that he was a pacifist. In 1946, he joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, chaired by Albert Einstein; its mission was to warn the public of the dangers associated with the development of nuclear weapons. His political activism prompted the U.S. State Department to deny him a passport in 1952, when he was invited to speak at a scientific conference in London. His passport was restored in 1954, shortly before the ceremony in Stockholm where he received his first Nobel Prize. Joining Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight other leading scientists and intellectuals, he signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955.

In 1957, Pauling began a petition drive in cooperation with biologist Barry Commoner, who had studied radioactive strontium-90 in the baby teeth of children across North America and concluded that above-ground nuclear testing posed public health risks in the form of radioactive fallout. He also participated in a public debate with the atomic physicist Edward Teller about the actual probability of fallout causing mutations. In 1958, Pauling and his wife presented the United Nations with a petition signed by more than 11,000 scientists calling for an end to nuclear-weapon testing. Public pressure subsequently led to a moratorium on above-ground nuclear weapons testing, followed by the Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. On the day that the treaty went into force, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Pauling the Nobel Peace Prize, describing him as "Linus Carl Pauling, who ever since 1946 has campaigned ceaselessly, not only against nuclear weapons tests, not only against the spread of these armaments, not only against their very use, but against all warfare as a means of solving international conflicts." Interestingly, the Caltech Chemistry Department, wary of his political views, did not even formally congratulate him. However, the Biology Department did throw him a small party, showing they were more appreciative and sympathetic toward his work on radiation mutation.

Many of Pauling's critics, including scientists who appreciated the contributions that he had made in chemistry, disagreed with his political positions and saw him as a naïve spokesman for Soviet communism. He was ordered to appear before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which termed him "the number one scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist peace offensive in this country." An extraordinary headline in Life magazine characterized his 1962 Nobel Prize as "A Weird Insult from Norway". Pauling was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR in 1970.

Death

Pauling died of prostate cancer on August 19, 1994 and is buried at Oswego Pioneer Cemetery, Lake Oswego, Oregon, USA.

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Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije (March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch physical chemist. He later legally changed his name to Peter Joseph William Debye.

Peter "Pie" Debye was born in Maastricht and after attending local schools in Maastricht went to the Aachen University of Technology, Germany, only 30 km from Maastricht, in 1901. He studied mathematics and classical physics, and in 1905 received a degree in electrical engineering. In 1907 he published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents. At Aachen he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye.

In 1906, Sommerfeld received an appointment at Munich, and took Debye with him as his assistant. He got his Ph. D. with a dissertation on radiation pressure in 1908. In 1910 he derived the Planck radiation formula using a method which Max Planck agreed was simpler than his own method.

In 1911, when Albert Einstein took an appointment as a professor at Prague, Debye took his old professorship at Zürich. This was followed by moves to Utrecht in 1912, Göttingen in 1913, back to Zürich in 1920, to Leipzig in 1927, and to Berlin in 1934, where he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, saw to the construction of new laboratories, and developed it into what is the now-world-regarded Max Planck Institute. He was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1935. From 1937 to 1939 he was the president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.

In 1913 he married Mathilde Alberer. They had a son and a daughter; their son (Peter P. Debye) became a physicist and collaborated with Debye in some of his researches.
children = Peter Paul Rupprecht (b. 1916), Mathilde Maria (b. 1921)

His first major scientific contribution was the application of the concept of dipole moment to the charge distribution in asymmetric molecules in 1912, developing equations relating dipole moments to temperature, dielectric constant, debye relaxation, etc. In consequence, molecular dipole moments are measured in debyes, a unit named in his honor.
Also in 1912, he extended Albert Einstein's theory of specific heat to lower temperatures by including contributions from low-frequency phonons. See Debye model.
in 1913, he extended Niels Bohr's theory of atomic structure, introducing elliptical orbits, a concept also introduced by Arnold Sommerfeld.
In 1914-1915, he calculated the effect of temperature on X-ray diffraction patterns of crystalline solids with Paul Scherrer. (The "Debye-Waller" factor)
In 1923, with his assistant Erich Hückel, he developed an improvement of Svante Arrhenius' theory of electrical conductivity in electrolytic solutions. Although an improvement was made to the Debye-Hückel equation in 1926 by Lars Onsager, the theory is still regarded as a major forward step in our understanding of electrolytic solutions.
Also in 1923, he developed a theory to explain the Compton effect, the shifting of the frequency of X-rays when they interact with electrons.
In 1936, Debye was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (entry at nobelprize.org) "for his contributions to the study of molecular structure," primarily referring to his work on dipole moments and X-ray diffraction.

From 1934 to 1939 Debye was director of the physics section of the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. These were years that Hitler ruled over Germany and from 1938 onward also over Austria.

In January 2006 a book (in Dutch) appeared in The Netherlands written by Sybe Rispens entitled Einstein in the Netherlands.[1] One chapter of this book treats the relationship between Einstein and Debye. Rispens discovered documents that—as he believed—were new and proved that in this period Debye was actively involved in cleansing German science institutions from Jewish and other "non-Aryan elements". Rispens records that on December 9, 1938 Debye wrote in his capacity as chairman of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG) to all the members of the DPG:

In light of the current situation, membership by German Jews as stipulated by the Nuremberg laws, of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft cannot be continued. According to the wishes of the board, I ask of all members to whom these definitions apply to report to me their resignation. Heil Hitler!

Interestingly enough, an article[2] appeared 18 years before Rispens' book about the same letter. It describes the missive in more detail and presents a very favorable picture of Peter Debye in his efforts to resist the Nazi activists. Moreover, this article points out that Max von Laue, well known for his anti-Nazi views, gave his approval to the letter from the DPG chairman.

Further, Rispens[1] alleges that Albert Einstein in the first half of 1940 actively tried to prevent Debye from being appointed in the United States at Cornell University. Allegedly Einstein wrote to his American colleagues: "I know from a reliable source that Peter Debye is still in close contact with the German (Nazi) leaders" and, according to Rispens, Einstein called upon his colleagues to do "what they consider their duty as American citizens". To underpin this, Rispens refers to a well-known letter from Debye to Einstein and Einstein's response to this letter. Van Ginkel[3] investigated 1940 FBI reports on this matter and traced the "reliable source" to a single letter directed to Einstein and written by somebody whose name is lost. This somebody was not known personally to Einstein and —according to Einstein—probably did not know Debye personally either. Moreover, this accusating letter did not reach Einstein directly but was intercepted by British censors who showed it to Einstein. Einstein sent the British agent with the letter to Cornell. The Cornell authorities told Debye about the affair. Thereupon Debye wrote his well-known 1940 letter to Einstein to which Einstein answered. The latter two letters can be found in the published Einstein correspondence.

Notwithstanding the vague accusations, Debye was offered a chance to give a series of lectures at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and he traveled to the United States of America. After leaving Germany in early 1940, Peter Debye remained at Cornell University until his death in 1966.

Other biographies[4][5][6] published before Rispens' work, state that Debye moved to the US because he refused to accept German citizenship forced on to him by the Nazis. He planned his departure from Germany during a visit with his mother in Maastricht in late 1939, boarded a ship in Genoa in January 1940 and arrived in New York in early February 1940. He immediately sought a permanent position in the US and accepted such an offer from Cornell in June 1940. That month, he crossed the US border into Canada and returned within days on an immigration visa. He was able to get his wife out of Germany and to the US by December 1940. Although his son already was in the US before he departed, Peter Debye's 19 year old daughter and sister-in-law did not leave. They lived in his official residence in Berlin and had them supported by his official Berlin wages (he carefully maintained an official leave of absence for this purpose).

Rispens alleges that Debye sent a telegram to Berlin on 23 June 1941 informing his previous employers that he was able and willing to resume his responsibilities at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut, presumably in order to maintain his leave of absence and keep the Berlin house and wages available for the support of his daughter. A copy of this telegram has not been recovered thus far. In summer 1941, Debye filed his intent to become a US citizen and quickly was recruited in the US to participate in the Allied War research.

It has been well documented in many biographies and also in Rispens' book that Peter Debye and Dutch colleagues helped his Jewish colleague Lise Meitner in 1938-1939 (at great risk to himself and his family[7][8]) cross the Dutch-German border to escape Nazi prosecution and eventually landing a position in Sweden.

His son, Peter P. Debye, interviewed in 2006 at age 89[9] recollects that his father was completely apolitical and that in the privacy of their home politics were never discussed. According to his son Debye just wanted to do his job at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and that as long as the Nazis did not bother him he was able to do so. He recalls that his mother urged him (the son) to stay in the US in the event war would break out. He had come to the US on a planned 2-month vacation during the Summer of 1939 and never returned to Germany because war did, indeed, break out.

Although poorly documented, the accusations of Rispens were considered harmful enough by the Board of Directors of the University of Utrecht to announce on February 16, 2006 a name change for the Debye Institute. This was done after consultation with NIOD.[10]

In an opinion article published on the Debye Institute website, Dr. Gijs van Ginkel, until April 2007 Senior Managing Director of the VM Debye Instituut in Utrecht[11] deplored this decision. In his article he cites scholars who point out that the DPG was able to retain their threatened staff as long as could be expected under increasing pressure from the Nazis. He also puts forward the important argument that when Debye in 1950 received the Max Planck medal of the DPG, nobody objected, not even the known opponent of the national socialists Max von Laue, who would be in a position to object. Also Einstein, with his enormous prestige, was still alive, as were other Jewish scientists such as Meitner and James Franck who both knew Debye intimately. None of them protested against Debye receiving the highest German scientific distinction.

The Maastricht University is reconsidering its position on the Peter Debye Prijs voor natuurwetenschappelijk onderzoek (Peter Debye Prize for scientific research)[12]

In a reply on the DPG website,[13] Dieter Hoffmann and Mark Walker also conclude that Debye was not a Nazi activist. They remark that the aforementioned Max von Laue was also required and obliged (as a civil servant) to sign letters with Heil Hitler. They also state that the DPG was one of the last scientific societies to purge the Jewish members and only very reluctantly. They quote the response of the Reich University Teachers League (a National Socialist organization) to the Debye letter:

Obviously the German Physical Society is still very backward and still clings tightly to their dear Jews. It is in fact remarkable that only "because of circumstances beyond our control" the membership of Jews can no longer be maintained

In May 2006,[14] the Dutch Nobel Prize winner Martinus Veltman who had written the foreword to the Rispen book, renounced the book's description of Peter Debye, withdrew his foreword, and asked the Board of Director's of Utrecht University to rescind their decision to rename the Debye Institute.

Various historical investigations both in The Netherlands and in the US have been carried out subsequent to the actions of the University of Maastricht. The earliest of these investigations, carried out by the Cornell University's department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology is now complete. The report[15] of the Cornell investigation, released on 31 May 2006, states that:

Based on the information to-date, we have not found evidence supporting the accusations that Debye was a Nazi sympathizer or collaborator or that he held anti-Semitic views. It is important that this be stated clearly since these are the most serious allegations.

It goes on to declare:

Thus, based on the information, evidence and historical record known to date, we believe that any action that dissociates Debye's name from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell is unwarranted.

In June 2006 it was reported[16][17] that the scientific director of the (formerly) Debye Institute had been reprimanded by the Board of Directors of the University of Utrecht for a new publication on Debye's war years on the grounds that it is was too personally biased with respect to the institutes naming dispute. According to the board the book should not have been published as a Debye Institute publication but as a personal one. The book[3] was banned by the University of Utrecht and both Directors of the (former) Debye Institute were forbidden to have any further contact with the press.

Debye ended up staying at Cornell, became a professor (and, for 10 years, chairman of the chemistry department, and member of Alpha Chi Sigma) there, and in 1946 became an American citizen. Unlike the European phase of his life, where Debye moved from city to city every few years, in the United States he remained at Cornell for the whole remainder of his career. He retired in 1952, but continued research until his death.

Much of his work at Cornell concerned the use of light-scattering techniques (derived from his X-ray scattering work of years earlier) to determine the size and molecular weight of polymer molecules. This started as a result of his work during World War II on synthetic rubber, but was extended to proteins and other macromolecules.

In April 1966 he suffered a heart attack, and in November of that year a second, which proved fatal. He is buried in the Pleasant Grove Cemetery (Ithaca, New York, USA).

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