Who are some famous non-American chemists and what are their contributions to the field of science?

Answer 1

Non-American Chemists

• The most infamous of all foreign chemists is Bruno Tesch, sole owner of the firm of Tesch und Stabenow. Unfortunately, what he's most famous for is selling train-loads of Zyklon B to the Nazis, who used it for many things. Its most famous use was to murder people, but most of it was used in fumigation. Anyway, Bruno Tesch was hanged for this, which is good because Herr Tesch was a supremely evil man.
• Probably the most famous foreign chemist was Marie Curie, who discovered radium.
• One of my favorite European chemists is William Perkin, who accidentally invented a synthetic purple dye and launched the European chemical industry. His great invention was indeed an accident; he was really trying to invent synthetic quinine to treat malaria.
• Another German chemist was Fritz Haber (with substantial help from Carl Bosch), who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the process for synthesizing ammonia. The production of fertilizer from ammonia effectively solved the "Malthusian catastrophe", which predicted world wide famine due to overpopulation. The Haber-Bosch process produced fertilizer at an industrial scale that would eventually grow crops to feed humans worldwide.

• John Dalton was an English chemist who was one of the first to derive the atomic theory. All chemistry is based upon the theory of existence of atoms.

• Dmitri Mendeleev was a Russian chemist who created the Periodic Table and formed the bases for classification of the physical and chemical properties of elements as functions of their Atomic Mass (later changed to atomic number). Using trends he saw, he even predicted elements through averaged atomic mass.
• Russian William Wollaston in 1803 suggested the purification of Platinum and making it malleable, he also discovered two more elements i.e. palladium and rhodium.Platinum deposits associated with gold and osmiridium were found in Ural mountains.Pure platinum thus obtained was used to manufacture such items as rings,chains,pistol and musket pans,crowns,church plate etc.