Leopold Gmelin

German chemist (1788–1853)

Gmelin, whose father and grandfather were botanists, was born at Göttingen (in Germany) and studied at the universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, and Vienna. In 1817 he was appointed to the first chair of chemistry at Heidelberg, where he remained until 1851. In 1817 he published the first edition of what was to become the major chemical textbook of the first half of the 19th century, Handbuch der Chemie (Handbook of Chemistry), in three volumes. By 1843 the book was in its fourth edition and had been expanded to nine volumes. In this edition Gmelin adopted the atomic theory and devoted much more space to the growing discipline of organic chemistry. The terms ester and ketone were introduced by him. His book was translated into English in 1848.

He also worked on the chemistry of digestion, discovering several of the constituents of bile, and introduced Gmelin's test for bile pigments. In 1822 he discovered potassium ferrocyanide.

Leopold Gmelin

Leopold Gmelin (August 2, 1788 – April 13, 1853) was a German chemist.

Gmelin was the son of Johann Friedrich Gmelin. He studied medicine and chemistry at Göttingen, Tübingen and Vienna, and in 1813 began to lecture on chemistry at Heidelberg, where in 1814 he was appointed extraordinary-, and in 1817 ordinary-, professor of chemistry and medicine. He was the discoverer of potassium ferricyanide (1822), and wrote the Handbuch der Chemie (first edition 1817–1819, 4th ed. 1843-1855), an important work in its day, which was translated into English for the Cavendish Society by H. Watts (1815–1884) in 1848- 1850. He resigned his chair in 1852, and died at Heidelberg.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Who Named It biography

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)