3rd Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Svante August Arrhenius
The 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Svante August Arrhenius “for his outstanding service to the advancement of chemistry with the theory of electrolytic dissociation”.
Svante August Arrhenius was born on February 19, 1859. Showing an aptitude for arithmetic calculations from an early age, Svante entered Uppsala University in 1876, studying mathematics, chemistry and physics. In 1881 he went to Stockholm to study under Professor E. Edlund at the Academy of Sciences.
Svante August Arrhenius, who stepped into academia by assisting Edlund in his work on electromotive force measurements in spark discharges, soon moved to his field of interest and prepared his thesis titled “Research on the galvanic conductivity of electrolytes” (Recherches sur la conductibilité galvanique des électrolytes).
From his results, the author concluded that electrolytes dissociate or dissociate into electrically opposite positive and negative ions to varying degrees when dissolved in water.
The extent to which this decomposition occurred was primarily dependent on the nature of the substance and its concentration in solution. The value of Arrhenius’ publication was not well understood by the science faculty in Uppsala.
On the other hand, Otto Pettersson, Professor of Chemistry at Stockholms Högskola, met the young scientist Arrhenius. The fundamental importance of Arrhenius’s work was thus clarified, and at the end of 1884 he received his doctorate in physical chemistry at Uppsala, a first in Sweden in this new discipline.
Under Edlund’s influence, he received a traveling fellowship from the Academy of Sciences in 1886, which enabled him to study with Ostwald in Riga and Kohlrausch in Würzburg. In 1887 he was with Boltzmann in Graz, and in 1888 he studied with van ‘t Hoff in Amsterdam.
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Svante August Arrhenius[/caption]
During these years, Arrhenius was able to demonstrate the effect of electrolytic dissociation on osmotic pressure, lowering the freezing point, and increasing the boiling point
of solutions containing electrolytes.
He then examined the relationship between toxins and antitoxins, their importance in relation to biological problems such as serum therapy, digestion and absorption, as well as gastric and pancreatic juices. The great importance of electrolytic dissociation theory is universally accepted today, even if some modifications have been found necessary.
Arrhenius also applied physicochemical principles to the study of meteorology, cosmology, and biochemistry. In meteorology, he predicted the scientific conclusion that increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere cause global warming.
Svante Arrhenius made important contributions to our understanding of the greenhouse effect and the role of greenhouse gases in Earth’s climate. In 1896, he published an article entitled “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground,”
which suggested that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by human activities could lead to global warming.
Arrhenius suggested that the carbon dioxide, water vapor and other gases in the Earth’s atmosphere acted like a greenhouse by trapping heat from the sun and preventing it from escaping back into space. He calculated that doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could raise global temperatures by up to 5-6 degrees Celsius.
Arrhenius’ ideas were groundbreaking and laid the foundation for much of our modern understanding of the greenhouse effect and climate change. Arrhenius always returned to Stockholm, although he was offered opportunities to transfer to other European universities and taught major courses at universities in the United States.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903 and became director of the newly
founded Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry in 1905. He made successful efforts to free and repatriate German and Austrian scientists who were prisoners of war during the First World War.
Married twice, Arrhenius had a son from his first marriage, a son and two daughters from his other marriage. Arrhenius, who died on October 2, 1927 in Stockholm, was buried in Uppsala.
References:
• Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1966
• https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/svante-august-arrhenius
• https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Arrhenius
• https://nationalmaglab.org/magnet-academy/history-of-electricity-magnetism/pioneers/svante-arrhenius/
• https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/uniarchiv/personalities/eminent-scholars/svante-arrhenius/
