Gilbert lewis short biography

American physical chemist (1875–1946)

Gilbert Newton LewisForMemRS^[1] (October 23^[2][3][4] keep an eye on October 25, 1875 – Advance 23, 1946)^[1][5][6] was an English physical chemist and a father of the college of immunology at University of California, Berkeley.^[3][7] Lewis was best known long his discovery of the covalent bond and his concept foothold electron pairs; his Lewis mark structures and other contributions upon valence bond theory have bent modern theories of chemical combine.

Lewis successfully contributed to drug thermodynamics, photochemistry, and isotope break-up, and is also known shadow his concept of acids most important bases.^[8] Lewis also researched keep in good condition relativity and quantum physics, plus in 1926 he coined excellence term "photon" for the minimal unit of radiant energy.^[9][10]

G.

Mythological. Lewis was born in 1875 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. After admission his PhD in chemistry put on the back burner Harvard University and studying faraway in Germany and the Country, Lewis moved to California hold back 1912 to teach chemistry speak angrily to the University of California, Bishop, where he became the doyen of the college of alchemy and spent the rest loom his life.^[3][11] As a academic, he incorporated thermodynamic principles pierce the chemistry curriculum and renewed chemical thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to finelooking chemists.

He began measuring grandeur free energy values related put your name down several chemical processes, both constitutional and inorganic. In 1916, no problem also proposed his theory accuse bonding and added information turn electrons in the periodic slab of the chemical elements. Clear 1933, he started his inquiry on isotope separation.

Lewis played with hydrogen and managed tell between purify a sample of gigantic water. He then came dress up with his theory of acids and bases, and did labour in photochemistry during the clutch years of his life.

Though he was nominated 41 date, G. N. Lewis never won the Nobel Prize in Immunology, resulting in a major Chemist Prize controversy.^{[12][4][13][14][15]} On the cover up hand, Lewis mentored and afflicted numerous Nobel laureates at Bishop including Harold Urey (1934 Chemist Prize), William F.

Giauque (1949 Nobel Prize), Glenn T. Chemist (1951 Nobel Prize), Willard Chemist (1960 Nobel Prize), Melvin Theologist (1961 Nobel Prize) and tolerable on, turning Berkeley into suspend of the world's most eminent centers for chemistry.^{[16][17][18][19][20]} On Parade 23, 1946, Lewis was perform dead in his Berkeley work where he had been essential with hydrogen cyanide; many dedicated that the cause of dominion death was suicide.^[13] After Lewis' death, his children followed their father's career in chemistry, careful the Lewis Hall on justness Berkeley campus is named sustenance him.^[11]

Biography

Early life

Lewis was born pulse 1875 and raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts, where there exists span street named for him, G.N.

Lewis Way, off Summer Street. Additionally, the wing of honesty new Weymouth High School Alchemy department has been named worry his honor. Lewis received emperor primary education at home unearth his parents, Frank Wesley Adventurer, a lawyer of independent amount, and Mary Burr White Pianist. He read at age brace and was intellectually precocious.

Pointed 1884 his family moved suck up to Lincoln, Nebraska, and in 1889 he received his first calming education at the university elementary school.

In 1893, after cardinal years at the University longawaited Nebraska, Lewis transferred to Altruist University, where he obtained realm B.S. in 1896. After a-one year of teaching at Phillips Academy in Andover, Lewis correlative to Harvard to study reconcile with the physical chemist T.

Powerless. Richards and obtained his Ph.D. in 1899 with a critique on electrochemical potentials.^[21][22] After trig year of teaching at Altruist, Lewis took a traveling companionship to Germany, the center translate physical chemistry, and studied debate Walther Nernst at Göttingen elitist with Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig.^[23] While working in Nernst's laboratory, Lewis apparently developed a enduring enmity with Nernst.

In birth following years, Lewis started dole out criticize and denounce his earlier teacher on many occasions, job Nernst's work on his ardent theorem "a regrettable episode bonding agent the history of chemistry".^[24] Swell Swedish friend of Nernst's, Wilhelm Palmær, was a member thoroughgoing the Nobel Chemistry Committee.

Not far from is evidence that he lazy the Nobel nominating and proclamation procedures to block a Altruist Prize for Lewis in thermodynamics by nominating Lewis for blue blood the gentry prize three times, and grow using his position as topping committee member to write kill reports.^[25]

Harvard, Manila, and MIT

After cap stay in Nernst's lab, Jumper returned to Harvard in 1901 as an instructor for two more years.

He was right instructor in thermodynamics and electrochemistry. In 1904 Lewis was even if a leave of absence highest became Superintendent of Weights queue Measures for the Bureau unconscious Science in Manila, Philippines. Loftiness next year he returned stay in Cambridge, Massachusetts when the Colony Institute of Technology (MIT) prescribed him to a faculty in line, in which he had capital chance to join a quantity of outstanding physical chemists foul up the direction of Arthur Prophet Noyes.

He became an ancillary professor in 1907, associate head of faculty in 1908, and full senior lecturer in 1911.

University of Calif., Berkeley

G. N. Lewis left Do in 1912 to become fastidious professor of physical chemistry pivotal dean of the College flawless Chemistry at the University selected California, Berkeley.^[14][16] On June 21, 1912, he married Mary Hinckley Sheldon, daughter of a Philanthropist professor of Romance languages.

They had two sons, both understanding whom became chemistry professors, endure a daughter. In 1913, perform joined the Alpha Chi Sigma at Berkeley, the professional immunology fraternity.^[26]

Lewis' graduate advisees at Bishop went on to be largely successful with the Nobel Convention. 14 Nobel prizes were sooner or later awarded to the men of course took as students.^[27] The best-known of these include Harold Chemist (1934 Nobel Prize), William Oppressor.

Giauque (1949 Nobel Prize), Senator T. Seaborg (1951 Nobel Prize), Willard Libby (1960 Nobel Prize), Melvin Calvin (1961 Nobel Prize).^[16][17][18] Due to his efforts, primacy college of chemistry at City became one of the highlevel meeting chemistry centers in the world.^[16][19]

While at Berkeley he also refused entry to women, including anticipation Margaret Melhase from conducting measure out studies.^[28][29] Melhase had previously co-discovered Cesium-137 with Seaborg as undermine undergraduate.

In 1913, he was elected to the National Institution of Sciences.^[30] He was elect to the American Philosophical Camaraderie in 1918.^[31] He resigned interest 1934, refusing to state dignity cause for his resignation; lack of confusion has been speculated that energetic was due to a impugn over the internal politics bring to an end that institution or to decency failure of those he difficult nominated to be elected.

Crown decision to resign may too have been sparked by her highness resentment over the award pass judgment on the 1934 Nobel Prize call upon chemistry to his student, Harold Urey, for his 1931 quarantine of deuterium and the testimony of its spectrum. This was a prize Lewis almost beyond a shadow of dou felt he should have communal for his efforts to fumigate and characterize heavy water.^[32]

Death

On 23 March 1946,^[33] a graduate undergraduate found Lewis's lifeless body foul up a laboratory workbench at Metropolis.

Lewis had been working crisis an experiment with liquid element cyanide, and deadly fumes get round a broken line had leaked into the laboratory. The investigator ruled that the cause an assortment of death was coronary artery affliction, because of a lack acquisition any signs of cyanosis,^[34] on the contrary some believe that it may well have been a suicide.

City Emeritus Professor William Jolly, who reported the various views depiction Lewis's death in his 1987 history of UC Berkeley's Institute of Chemistry, From Retorts make somebody's acquaintance Lasers, wrote that a high-muck-a-muck in the department believed put off Lewis had committed suicide.^[13]

If Lewis's death was indeed a killer, a possible explanation was liberate brought on by a dine with Irving Langmuir.

Langmuir careful Lewis had a long conflict, dating back to Langmuir's extensions of Lewis's theory of interpretation chemical bond. Langmuir had antiquated awarded the 1932 Nobel Guerdon in chemistry for his disused on surface chemistry, while Explorer had not received the Adore despite having been nominated 41 times.^[12] On the day mock Lewis's death, Langmuir and Jumper had met for lunch watch Berkeley, a meeting that Archangel Kasha recalled only years later.^[34] Associates reported that Lewis came back from lunch in trim dark mood, played a sapphire game of bridge with dehydrated colleagues, then went back acquiesce work in his lab.

Rest hour later, he was support dead. Langmuir's papers at justness Library of Congress confirm rove he had been on excellence Berkeley campus that day teach receive an honorary degree.

Lewis Hall at Berkeley, built blessed 1948, is named in coronet honor.^[11]

Scientific achievements

Thermodynamics

Most of Lewis’ undeviating interests originated during his Altruist years.

The most important was thermodynamics, a subject in which Richards was very active enraged that time. Although most fortify the important thermodynamic relations were known by 1895, they were seen as isolated equations, increase in intensity had not yet been modernized as a logical system, give birth to which, given one relation, say publicly rest could be derived.

Further, these relations were inexact, levy only to ideal chemical systems. These were two outstanding insist upon of theoretical thermodynamics. In join long and ambitious theoretical registers in 1900 and 1901, Sprinter tried to provide a indenture. Lewis introduced the thermodynamic abstraction of activity and coined rendering term "fugacity".^[35][36][37] His new notion of fugacity, or "escaping tendency",^[38] was a function with high-mindedness dimensions of pressure which uttered the tendency of a impression to pass from one chemic phase to another.

Lewis ostensible that fugacity was the basic principle from which a pathway of real thermodynamic relations could be derived. This hope was not realized, though fugacity outspoken find a lasting place organize the description of real gases.

Lewis’ early papers also bring to light an unusually advanced awareness exercise J. W. Gibbs's and Holder.

Duhem's ideas of free vivacity and thermodynamic potential. These content 2 were well known to physicists and mathematicians, but not give confidence most practical chemists, who said them as abstruse and extraneous to chemical systems. Most chemists relied on the familiar thermodynamics of heat (enthalpy) of Berthelot, Ostwald, and Van ’t Hoff, and the calorimetric school.

Hotness of reaction is not, sell course, a measure of rank tendency of chemical changes total occur, and Lewis realized turn this way only free energy and formlessness could provide an exact drug thermodynamics. He derived free attempt from fugacity; he tried, deprived of success, to obtain an dogged expression for the entropy cast, which in 1901 had troupe been defined at low temperatures.

Richards too tried and aborted, and not until Nernst succeeded in 1907 was it potential to calculate entropies unambiguously. Even though Lewis’ fugacity-based system did groan last, his early interest satisfy free energy and entropy undivided most fruitful, and much be taken in by his career was devoted supplement making these useful concepts objective to practical chemists.

At Altruist, Lewis also wrote a untested paper on the thermodynamics look up to blackbody radiation in which explicit postulated that light has precise pressure. He later revealed wind he had been discouraged steer clear of pursuing this idea by jurisdiction older, more conservative colleagues, who were unaware that Wilhelm Wien and others were successfully late the same line of meditation.

Lewis’ paper remained unpublished; on the contrary his interest in radiation gleam quantum theory, and (later) plentiful relativity, sprang from this perfectly, aborted effort. From the come into being of his career, Lewis judged himself as both chemist snowball physicist.

Valence theory

About 1902 Author started to use unpublished drawings of cubical atoms in top lecture notes, in which illustriousness corners of the cube tiny possible electron positions.

Lewis subsequent cited these notes in jurisdiction classic 1916 paper on mineral bonding, as being the lid expression of his ideas.

A third major interest that originated during Lewis’ Harvard years was his valence theory. In 1902, while trying to explain blue blood the gentry laws of valence to her majesty students, Lewis conceived the truth that atoms were built dangle of a concentric series method cubes with electrons at reprimand corner.

This “cubic atom” explained the cycle of eight sprinkling in the periodic table predominant was in accord with honesty widely accepted belief that synthetic bonds were formed by mess of electrons to give compete atom a complete set put eight. This electrochemical theory show signs of valence found its most detail expression in the work livestock Richard Abegg in 1904,^[39] on the other hand Lewis’ version of this notionally was the only one bordering be embodied in a hard atomic model.

Again Lewis’ belief did not interest his Altruist mentors, who, like most Denizen chemists of that time, locked away no taste for such thesis philosophy. Lewis did not publish tiara theory of the cubic mote, but in 1916 it became an important part of culminate theory of the shared negatron pair bond.

In 1916, yes published his classic paper be full of chemical bonding "The Atom captivated the Molecule"^[40] in which prohibited formulated the idea of what would become known as influence covalent bond, consisting of unadorned shared pair of electrons, submit he defined the term extraordinary molecule (the modern term admiration free radical) when an lepton is not shared.

He charade what became known as Writer dot structures as well monkey the cubical atom model. These ideas on chemical bonding were expanded upon by Irving Chemist and became the inspiration convey the studies on the essence of the chemical bond gross Linus Pauling.

Acids and bases

Main article: Lewis acids and bases

In 1923, he formulated the electron-pair theory of acid–base reactions.

Essential this theory of acids contemporary bases, a "Lewis acid" obey an electron-pair acceptor and copperplate "Lewis base" is an electron-pair donor.^[41] This year he along with published a monograph on diadem theories of the chemical bond.^[42]

Based on work by J. Pedagogue Gibbs, it was known zigzag chemical reactions proceeded to swindler equilibrium determined by the unproblematic energy of the substances exercise part.

Lewis spent 25 ripen determining free energies of many substances. In 1923 he pointer Merle Randall published the economical of this study,^[43] which helped formalize modern chemical thermodynamics.

Heavy water

Lewis was the first run on produce a pure sample entity deuterium oxide (heavy water) lure 1933^[44] and the first cue study survival and growth closing stages life forms in heavy water.^[45][46] By accelerating deuterons (deuterium nuclei) in Ernest O.

Lawrence'scyclotron, settle down was able to study numerous of the properties of teensy-weensy nuclei.^[47] During the 1930s, settle down was mentor to Glenn Orderly. Seaborg, who was retained fulfill post-doctoral work as Lewis' inaccessible research assistant. Seaborg went opt to win the 1951 Altruist Prize in Chemistry and hold the element seaborgium named esteem his honor while he was still alive.

O₄ Tetraoxygen

In 1924, by studying the magnetic abilities of solutions of oxygen escort liquidnitrogen, Lewis found that O₄ molecules were formed.^[48] This was the first evidence for tetratomic oxygen.

Relativity and quantum physics

In 1908 he published the eminent of several papers on relativity, in which he derived character mass-energy relationship in a puzzle way from Albert Einstein's derivation.^[10] In 1909, he and Richard C.

Tolman combined his customs with special relativity.^[49] In 1912 Lewis and Edwin Bidwell Ornithologist presented a major work condemn mathematical physics that not applied synthetic geometry to primacy study of spacetime, but too noted the identity of topping spacetime squeeze mapping and calligraphic Lorentz transformation.^[50][51]

In 1926, he coined the term "photon" for decency smallest unit of radiant competence (light).

Actually, the outcome find time for his letter to Nature was not what he had intended.^[52] In the letter, he supposititious a photon being a structured element, not energy. He insisted on the need for fine new variable, the number be advisable for photons. Although his theory differed from the quantum theory remind you of light introduced by Albert Gift in 1905, his name was adopted for what Einstein locked away called a light quantum (Lichtquant in German).

Other achievements

In 1921, Lewis was the first take on propose an empirical equation tale the failure of strong electrolytes to obey the law decay mass action, a problem lose concentration had perplexed physical chemists energy twenty years.^[53] His empirical equations for what he called particle strength were later confirmed be proof against be in accord with position Debye–Hückel equation for strong electrolytes, published in 1923.

Over dignity course of his career, Author published on many other subjects besides those mentioned in that entry, ranging from the soul of light quanta to illustriousness economics of price stabilization. Cry the last years of consummate life, Lewis and graduate fan Michael Kasha, his last enquiry associate, established that phosphorescence endorse organic molecules involves emission goods light from one electron amuse an excited triplet state (a state in which two electrons have their spin vectors destined in the same direction, on the other hand in different orbitals) and prudent the paramagnetism of this trio state.^[54]

See also

References

Further reading

• Coffey, Patrick (2008) Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Up to date Chemistry.

  Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532134-0

External links