On this day back in 1802, Germain Hess was born in Switzerland. Hess would go on to do important work in the field of thermochemistry, the part of chemistry concerned with energy changes in chemical reactions. His work led to the eponymous Hess’s law, explained in the graphic above. Hess also analysed the mineral silver telluride, which was named Hessite in his honour.
Today (19th April) marks the birthday of Glenn Seaborg. At the University of California, Berkeley, Seaborg and his colleagues discovered ten of the transuranium elements (elements after uranium in the Periodic Table).
On this day back in 2005, the world’s first legally-binding climate change agreement came into force. The Kyoto protocol, to which 192 countries are a party, aimed to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5.2% by 2012, relative to 1990. This graphic gives a brief overview of the agreement and the outcome of its first period.
In the history of the Nobel Prize, only one person has won a prize in two different sciences. That person was Marie Skłodowska Curie, born on 7th November 1867.
Rosalind Franklin was born on this day in 1920. Her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were key; she took photos of DNA’s structure using X-ray crystallography, and it was these photos that informed the work of Watson and Crick’s model of DNA’s structure. Sadly her contributions were not fully recognised until after her death, and she did not share in the award of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA’s structure as the prize is not awarded posthumously.
Today, February 28, marks the birthday of Linus Pauling. For chemists Pauling likely needs no introduction; he’s famed for his work on the nature of chemical bonds and also on the structures of biological molecules. Here we take a brief look at one aspect of his work to which he lent his name: the Pauling electronegativity scale.
