Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner
Template:Short description Template:Infobox scientist Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (13 December 1780 – 24 March 1849) was a German chemist who is known best for work that was suggestive of the periodic law for the chemical elements, and for inventing the first lighter, which was known as the Döbereiner's lamp.<ref name="inde_Trea">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He became a professor of chemistry and pharmacy for the University of Jena.
Life and work
As a coachman's son, Döbereiner had little opportunity for formal schooling. Thus, he was apprenticed to an apothecary, and began to read widely and to attend science lectures. He eventually became a professor for the University of Jena in 1810 and also studied chemistry at Strasbourg. In work published during 1829,<ref>Template:Cite journal
- English translation: Template:Cite book From p. 269: " … an attempt which I made twelve years ago to group substances by their analogies."</ref> Döbereiner reported trends in certain properties of selected groups of elements. For example, the average of the atomic masses of lithium and potassium was close to the atomic mass of sodium. A similar pattern was found with calcium, strontium, and barium; with sulfur, selenium, tellurium; and with chlorine, bromine, and iodine. Moreover, the densities for some of these triads had a similar pattern. These sets of elements became known as "Döbereiner's triads".<ref name=purdue>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Döbereiner is also known for his discovery of furfural,<ref>Template:Cite journal From p. 141: "Ich verbinde mit diese Bitte noch die Bemerkung, … Bittermandelöl riechende Materie enthält, … " (I join to this request also the observation that the formic acid which is formed by the simultaneous reaction of sulfuric acid and manganese peroxide with sugar and which contains a volatile material that appears oily in an isolated condition and that smells like a mixture of cassia and bitter almond oil … )</ref> for his work concerning the use of platinum as a catalyst, and for the invention of a lighter, known as Döbereiner's lamp.<ref>See:
- Template:Cite journal See also Fig. 14 on Table III.
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal</ref> By 1828 hundreds of thousands of these lighters had been mass produced by the German manufacturer Gottfried Piegler in Schleiz.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
The German writer Goethe was a friend of Döbereiner, attended his lectures weekly, and used his theories of chemical affinities as a basis for his famous 1809 novella Elective Affinities.
Works
- Deutsches Apothekerbuch . Vol. 1-3 . Balz, Stuttgart 1842-1848 Digital edition by the University and State Library Düsseldorf
References
Further reading
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journalff
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal
- Kimberley A. McGrath, Bridget Travers. 1999. World of Scientific Discovery. Gale Research.
- Scerri Eric. 2020, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, New York, Template:ISBN