istoryworld
Events relating to chemistry
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patents dynamite, making the volatile explosive nitroglycerine safer by combining it with kieselguhr
Dmitry Mendeleyev reads to the Russian Chemical Society in St Petersburg his formulation of the periodic table
Scottish chemist William Ramsay isolates the element helium
British chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers isolate the element c
British chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers isolate the element neon
British chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers isolate the element xenon
Marie Curie and her husband Pierre isolate a new element which they name polonium in honour of her native Poland
Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the element radium, working without any protection because unaware of the danger of radioactivity
Frederick Soddy observes his first examples of chemically identical elements with differing atomic weights, to which he later gives the name isotopes
Albert Einstein formulates the law of photochemical equivalence, a fundamental principle of chemical reactions induced by light
Frederick Soddy uses the term 'isotope' (Greek for 'same place') to describe observed anomalies in the periodic table
Linus Pauling, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, begins theoretical work on the nature of the chemical bond
US chemist Linus Pauling publishes his collected discoveries on The nature of the chemical bond
British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin describes the molecular structure of penicillin
The technique of radiocarbon dating is developed by US chemist Willard Libby
Syntex, a small chemical company in Mexico City, develops the first oral contraceptive
The drug Thalidomide, synthesized in West Germany, is shown to have been the cause of severe defects in about 12,000 children born in 46 countries
NASA announces that it has photographic evidence from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of possible liquid water on the planet in warm seasons
