A very brief history of chemistry. Includes important scientists and their contributions to the advancement of chemistry.

Subject  > Science Essays  > Chemistry

The History and Progression of Chemistry The birth of the modern atomic theory. In 1750, Rudjer Boscovich, a scientist born in what is now Croatia, suggested the theory that atoms were "uncuttable" might have been wrong. Boscovich thought that atoms contain smaller parts, which in turn contain still smaller parts, and so forth down to the fundamental building blocks of matter. He felt that these building blocks must be geometric points with no size at all. Today, most atomic physicists accept a modern form of this idea. Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist, revolutionized chemistry in the late 1700's. He repeated many of the experiments of earlier chemists but interpreted the results far differently. Lavoisier paid particular attention to the weight of the ...

... number of atoms of another substance in forming a compound. Dalton realized that substances must combine in the same proportions by weight as the weight proportions of their atoms. Chemists had already observed that pure substances do combine in fixed proportions. They called that finding the law of definite proportions. Dalton's theory explained the law and was gradually accepted. By 1814, Jons J. Berzelius, a Swedish chemist, had obtained accurate atomic weights for a number of elements. He also began the system of using letters of the alphabet as symbols for elements. Formation of the periodic table In 1869, a Russian chemist named Dmitri Mendeleev and a German chemist named Julius Lothar Meyer independently announced their discovery of

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