Robert Bunsen
Oxford Dictionary of Chemistry:
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Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
(1811–99) German chemist, who held professorships at Kassel, Marburg, and Heidelberg. His early researches on arsenic-containing compounds cost him an eye in an explosion. He then turned to gas analysis and spectroscopy, enabling him and Kirchhoff to discover the elements caesium (1860) and rubidium (1861). He also popularized the use of the Bunsen burner and developed the Bunsen cell.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
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Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
(born March 30, 1811, Gttingen, Westphaliadied Aug. 16, 1899, Heidelberg, Baden) German chemist. With Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, he observed ( 1859) that each element emits light of a characteristic wavelength, opening the field of spectrochemical analysis. They discovered several new elements (including helium, cesium, and rubidium) by spectroscopy. His only book discussed methods of measuring volumes of gases. He invented the carbon-zinc battery, grease-spot photometer ( photometry), filter pump, ice calorimeter, and vapour calorimeter. Though often credited with inventing the Bunsen burner, he seems to have made only a minor contribution to its development.
For more information on Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, visit Britannica.com.
Oxford Dictionary of Scientists:
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Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
German chemist (1811–1899)
Bunsen, the son of a professor of linguistics, gained his doctorate at the university in his native city of Göttingen (1830) with a thesis on hygrometers. After an extensive scientific tour in Europe, he became a lecturer at Göttingen in 1834. He was professor of chemistry at Kassel (1836), Marburg (1841), and Heidelberg (1852–89).
Bunsen carried out one great series of researches in organic chemistry, Studies in the Cacodyl Series (1837–42), after which he abandoned organic for analytical and inorganic chemistry. During his research on the highly toxic cacodyl compound he lost one eye in an explosion and twice nearly killed himself through arsenic poisoning. He prepared various derivatives of cacodyl (tetramethylarsine, (CH3)2As2(CH3)2), including the chloride, iodide, fluoride, and cyanide, and his work was eagerly welcomed by Jöns Berzelius as confirmation of his theory that organic chemistry mirrored inorganic, the ‘radical theory’.
Bunsen was a great experimentalist, an expert in gas analysis and glass blowing, and a pioneer of photochemistry and spectroscopy. He also worked in electrochemistry, devising an improved version of the Grove cell. At Heidelberg he used his new cell to produce metals by electrodeposition. The classic paper Chemical Analysis through Observation of the Spectrum (1860) by Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff ushered in the era of chemical spectroscopy. The spectroscope was an extremely sensitive analytical instrument. With it Bunsen discovered two new elements: rubidium and cesium.
The famous Bunsen burner was introduced by him in 1855, although a similar burner, used by Michael Faraday, did exist before Bunsen and the regulating collar was a later refinement. He greatly refined gas analysis and wrote a standard treatise on the subject, Gasometrische Methoden (1857, Methods in Gas Measurement).
Bunsen was a great teacher and at Heidelberg he became a legend. Chemists who came to study with him included Adolph Kolbe, Edward Frankland, Victor and Lothar Meyer, Friedrich Beilstein, and Johann Baeyer.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
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Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
The German chemist and physicist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-1899) was one of the great experimental chemists and a pioneer of chemical spectroscopy.
Robert Bunsen was born on March 31, 1811, in the university town of Göttingen. His father was professor of linguistics and librarian at the university. Bunsen completed his advanced education at Göttingen, developing an extensive mastery of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and mineralogy. In later years, when his fame as an experimentalist was worldwide, Bunsen stated that "a chemist who is not a physicist is nothing."
With his strong practical bent and interest in the expanding industrial revolution, Bunsen studied blast furnace operations, the working of steam engines, and the physiochemical processes of the famed porcelain works at Sèvres. In later years his scientific discoveries contributed to the increased efficiency of some of these basic industries.
Bunsen established his reputation through his work in inorganic chemistry and his classical set of experiments in organic chemistry which involved the properties of the cacodyl series of compounds. These organic arsenic bodies were highly dangerous, and his work with them nearly cost Bunsen his life. A useful by-product of this research was his discovery of the antidote for arsenic poisoning.
In 1852 Bunsen succeeded Leopold Gmelin in Heidelberg. There he established his Institute of Chemistry, which soon attracted the most brilliant students from all over the world, including Edward Frankland, the developer of the theory of chemical valency, and Victor Meyer, the pioneer in the chemistry of benzene compounds.
A master craftsman, Bunsen developed many of the instruments for analytical chemistry, including the burner which bears his name but which had been used first in a primitive form by Michael Faraday. The ice calorimeter and many devices for gas analysis were the product of Bunsen's personal skill.
Bunsen contributed to the foundations of photochemistry in collaboration with H. E. Roscoe, determining the effect of light on the combining reactions of hydrogen and chlorine. This led Bunsen to the first effort to estimate the radiant energy of the sun.
The most fruitful collaboration of Bunsen was his work with Gustav Kirchhoff, the German physicist. By combining the Bunsen burner with the optical system pioneered by Joseph von Fraunhofer, the two scientists developed the science and art of spectroscopy. Since each chemical element rendered radiant by the heat source emitted a characteristic pattern of lines (spectrum), there had been developed the supreme instrument of chemical analysis. Bunsen and Kirchhoff soon discovered two hitherto-unknown elements, cesium and rubidium.
Further Reading
A good account of Bunsen appears in volume 4 of J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry (1964). Eduard Farber, ed., Great Chemists (1961), contains a short biographical sketch. Henry M. Leicester and Herbert S. Klickstein, A Source Book in Chemistry, 1400-1900 (1952), includes a description of Bunsen's work.
Oxford Companion to German Literature:
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Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm (Göttingen, 1811-99, Heidelberg), the distinguished chemist, who occupied chairs successively at Marburg (1838), Breslau (1851), and Heidelberg (1852), retiring in 1889. With G. R. Kirchhoff (1824-87) he developed spectrum analysis. He invented many appliances, and is most widely known for the Bunsen cell (1841) and, above all, the Bunsen burner (1855).
Columbia Encyclopedia:
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Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm (bŭn'sən, Ger. rō'bĕrt vĭl'hĕlm bʊn'zən), 1811-99, German scientist, educated at the Univ. of Göttingen, where he received his doctorate in 1830. He served on the faculties of several universities and was at Heidelberg from 1852 to 1889. His first important contribution to chemistry came with his investigation of certain organic compounds of arsenic, in the process of which he discovered that ferric oxide could be used as an antidote to arsenic poisoning. From his studies of the gaseous products of blast furnaces he evolved a method of gas analysis, presented in his book Gasometrische Methoden (1857). With Kirchhoff at Heidelberg he discovered by spectroscopy the elements cesium and rubidium. Bunsen wrote many articles and collaborated with Kirchhoff on Chemische Analyse durch Spektralbeobachtungen (1860). His important contributions to petrology and chemicogeology include the explanation of geyser action. He invented and improved various kinds of laboratory equipment, including the Bunsen cell, the Bunsen photometer (see photometry), and the Bunsen burner.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Robert Bunsen
Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (30 March 1811[N1] – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and Kirchhoff.
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Early life and education
Robert Bunsen was born at Göttingen in 1811 in what is now the state of Lower Saxony in Germany, but was then the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia; upon the defeat of Napoleon three years later it became the Kingdom of Hanover.[1] Robert was the youngest of four sons of the University of Göttingen's chief librarian and professor of modern philology, Christian Bunsen (1770–1837).[1] Sources disagree on Robert Bunsen's exact birth date. His parish register, as well as two curricula vitae, handwritten by Bunsen himself, support the claim that 30 March 1811 is Bunsen's true birth date;[2][3][4][5] however, many later sources cite 31 March as the date.[1][6][7][8][9][10] According to his biographer Georg Lockemann, Bunsen himself celebrated his birthday on the 31st in his later years. Lockemann nevertheless regarded the 30th as the correct date.[5]
After attending school in Holzminden, Bunsen matriculated at Göttingen in 1828 and studied chemistry with Friedrich Stromeyer as well as mineralogy with Johann Friedrich Ludwig Hausmann and mathematics with Carl Friedrich Gauss.[1] After obtaining a Ph.D. in 1831, Bunsen spent 1832 and 1833 traveling in Germany, France, and Austria; Friedlieb Runge (who discovered aniline and in 1819 isolated caffeine), Justus von Liebig in Gießen, and Eilhard Mitscherlich in Bonn were among the many scientists he met on his journeys.[1]
Academic career
In 1833 Bunsen became a lecturer at Göttingen and began experimental studies of the (in)solubility of metal salts of arsenous acid. His discovery of the use of iron oxide hydrate as a precipitating agent is still today the most effective antidote against arsenic poisoning. In 1836, Bunsen succeeded Friedrich Wöhler at the Polytechnic School of Kassel. Bunsen taught there for three years, and then accepted an associate professorship at the University of Marburg, where he continued his studies on cacodyl derivatives. He was promoted to full professorship in 1841.
Bunsen's work brought him quick and wide acclaim, partly because cacodyl, which is extremely toxic and undergoes spontaneous combustion in dry air, is so difficult to work with. Bunsen almost died from arsenic poisoning, and an explosion with cacodyl cost him sight in his right eye. In 1841, Bunsen created the Bunsen cell battery, using a carbon electrode instead of the expensive platinum electrode used in William Robert Grove's electrochemical cell. Early in 1851 he accepted a professorship at the University of Breslau, where he taught for three semesters.[citation needed]
In late 1852 Bunsen became the successor of Leopold Gmelin at the University of Heidelberg. There he used electrolysis to produce pure metals, such as chromium, magnesium, aluminium, manganese, sodium, barium, calcium and lithium. A long collaboration with Henry Enfield Roscoe began in 1852, in which they studied the photochemical formation of hydrogen chloride from hydrogen and chlorine. He discontinued his work with Roscoe in 1859 and joined Gustav Kirchhoff to study emission spectra of heated elements, a research area called spectrum analysis. For this work, Bunsen and his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, had perfected a special gas burner by 1855, influenced by earlier models. The newer design of Bunsen and Desaga, which provided a very hot and clean flame, is now called simply the "Bunsen burner".[11][12]
There had been earlier studies of the characteristic colors of heated elements, but nothing systematic. In the summer of 1859, Kirchhoff suggested to Bunsen that he try to form prismatic spectra of these colors. By October of that year the two scientists had invented an appropriate instrument, a prototype spectroscope. Using it, they were able to identify the characteristic spectra of sodium, lithium, and potassium. After numerous laborious purifications, Bunsen proved that highly pure samples gave unique spectra. In the course of this work, Bunsen detected previously unknown new blue spectral emission lines in samples of mineral water from Dürkheim. He guessed that these lines indicated the existence of an undiscovered chemical element. After careful distillation of forty tons of this water, in the spring of 1860 he was able to isolate 17 grams of a new element. He named the element "caesium", after the Latin word for deep blue. The following year he discovered rubidium, by a similar process.[citation needed]
In 1860, Bunsen was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[citation needed]
Personality
Bunsen was one of the most universally admired scientists of his generation. He was a master teacher, devoted to his students, and they were equally devoted to him. At a time of vigorous and often caustic scientific debates, Bunsen always conducted himself as a perfect gentleman, maintaining his distance from theoretical disputes. He much preferred to work quietly in his laboratory, continuing to enrich his science with useful discoveries. As a matter of principle he never took out a patent. He never married.[3][13]
Retirement and death
When Bunsen retired at the age of 78, he shifted his work solely to geology and mineralogy, an interest which he had pursued throughout his career. He died in Heidelberg, aged 88.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e Society, American Chemical (1900). "Professor Robert W. Bunsen". The Journal of the American Chemical Society (American Chemical Society) 23: 89–107. http://books.google.com/?id=u9oBAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA89&dq=robert+bunsen+son. Retrieved 2007-09-11.
- ^ Martin Quack (2011). "Wann wurde Robert Wilhelm Bunsen geboren?". Bunsen-Magazin (Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie) 2: 56–57.
- ^ a b Robert Wilhelm Bunsens Korrespondenz vor dem Antritt der Heidelberger Professur (1852): kritische Edition; Christine Stock, [ed.] Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007. ISBN 3-8047-2320-9
- ^ "Robert Wilhelm Bunsen", Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 3 April 2011
- ^ a b Georg Lockemann: Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. Lebensbild eines deutschen Naturforschers, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft Stuttgart, 1949, pg. 18
- ^ "Robert Bunsen's 200th Anniversary", Royal Society of Chemistry
- ^ "Bunsen without his burner", Colin A. Russell, Phys. Educ. 34(5) September 1999
- ^ "Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm Eberhard", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008). Retrieved 31 March 2011 from Encyclopedia.com
- ^ "The Centenary of Bunsen's Birth", Letter to the Editor, Nature, pp. 86, 79 (16 March 1911), doi:10.1038/086079b0
- ^ Teller, James D. (1943). "Humanizing Science and Mathematics by commemorating March Anniversaries". School Science and Mathematics (School Science and Mathematics Association) 43 (3): 234–250. doi:10.1111/j.1949-8594.1943.tb05846.x.
- ^ Jensen, William B. (2005). "The Origin of the Bunsen Burner". Journal of Chemical Education 82 (4). http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/HS/Journal/Issues/2005/Apr/clicSubscriber/V82N04/p518.pdf.
- ^ "Chemical Manipulation, Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry", Internet Archive Michael Faraday, 1827
- ^ G. Lockemann, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart, 1949, pp. 214–223.
Further reading
- Gasometry: Comprising the Leading Physical and Chemical Properties of Gases by Robert Bunsen; translated by Henry Roscoe. London: Walton and Maberly, 1857
- Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, by G. Lockeman, 1949.
- Sir Henry Roscoe's "Bunsen Memorial Lecture", in: Trans. Chem. Soc., 1900, reprinted (in German) with other obituary notices in an edition of Bunsen's collected works published by Wilhelm Ostwald and Max Bodenstein in 3 vols. at Leipzig in 1904. This is Gesammelte Abhandlungen von Robert Bunsen: im Auftrage der Deutschen Bunsen-Gesellschaft für angewandte Physikalische Chemie hrsg. von Wilhelm Ostwald und Max Bodenstein. 3 Bände. Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1904
- Crew, H. (1899). "Robert Wilhelm Bunsen". The Astrophysical Journal 10: 301–305. Bibcode 1899ApJ....10..301C. doi:10.1086/140654.
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