Walther Nernst

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German physical chemist (1864–1941)

Nernst, who was born at Briesen in Germany, studied at the universities of Zurich, Berlin, Würzburg, and Graz. After working as assistant to Wilhelm Ostwald in Leipzig from 1887 he became professor of chemistry at Göttingen in 1890. In 1904 he became professor of physical chemistry at Berlin and later was appointed director of the Institute for Experimental Physics there (1924–33). In 1933, out of favor with the Nazis, he retired to his country estate.

Nernst's early work was in electrochemistry – a field in which he made a number of contributions. Thus in 1889 he introduced the idea of the solubility product, i.e., the product of the concentrations of the different types of ions in a saturated solution. The product is a constant for sparingly soluble compounds (at constant temperature). Nernst also suggested (1903) the use of buffer solutions – mixed solutions of weak acids (or bases) and their salts, which resist changes in pH.

His main work, in 1906, was in thermodynamics. It came out of attempts to predict the course of chemical reactions from measurements of specific heats and heats of reaction. If heat is absorbed during a reaction, the amount absorbed falls with temperature and would become zero at absolute zero. Nernst postulated that the rate at which this reduction occurred would also become zero at absolute zero of temperature, and, as a consequence, derived the Nernst heat theorem, which states that if a reaction occurs between pure crystalline solids at absolute zero, then there is no change in entropy.

The theorem, stated in a slightly different form, is now known as the third law of thermodynamics. It is equivalent to the statement that absolute zero cannot be attained in a finite number of steps. At the time it allowed the calculation of absolute values of entropy (and then equilibrium constants), rather than changes in entropy. It is now known to be a consequence of the quantum statistics of the particles. For his work in thermodynamics, Nernst received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1920.

He also made contributions to photochemistry and, in addition, produced one of the standard texts of the period, Theoretische Chemie (1893; Theoretical Chemistry), which went through numerous editions and translations.

He managed to make a large fortune by the turn of the century by selling a form of electric light, which though superior to the Edison carbon-filament lamp soon became obsolete with the invention of the tungsten-filament lamp.

Walther Nernst (1864-1941) made a significant breakthrough with his statement of the Third Law of Thermodynamics, which holds that it should be impossibleto attain the temperature of absolute zero in any real experiment. For this accomplishment, he was awarded the 1920 Nobel Prize for chemistry.

In addition to his important work with thermodynamics, Walther Nernst made contributions to the field of physical chemistry. While still in his twenties, he devised a mathematical expression showing how electromotive force is dependent upon temperature and concentration in a galvanic, or electricity-producing, cell. He later developed a theory to explain how ionic, or charged, compounds break down in water, a problem that had troubled chemists since the theory of ionization was proposed by Svante A. Arrhenius.

Born Hermann Walther Nernst in Briesen, West Prussia (in what is now part of Poland) on June 25, 1864, he was the third child of Gustav Nernst, a judge, and Ottilie (Nerger) Nernst. He attended the gymnasium at Graudenz (now Grudziadz), Poland, where he developed an interest in poetry, literature, and drama. For a brief time, he considered becoming a poet. After graduation in 1883, Nernst attended the universities of Zurich, Berlin, Graz, and Würzburg, majoring in physics at each institution. He was awarded his Ph.D. summa cum laude in 1887 by Würzburg. His doctoral thesis dealt with the effects of magnetism and heat on electrical conductivity.

Nernst's first academic appointment came in 1887 when he was chosen as an assistant to professor Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald at the University of Leipzig. Ostwald had been introduced to Nernst earlier in Graz by Svante Arrhenius. These three, Ostwald, Arrhenius, and Nernst, were to become among the most influential men involved in the founding of the new discipline of physical chemistry, the application of physical laws to chemical phenomena.

The first problem Nernst addressed at Leipzig was the diffusion of two kinds of ions across a semipermeable membrane. He wrote a mathematical equation describing the process, now known as the Nernst equation, which relates the electric potential of the ions to various properties of the cell.

In the early 1890s, Nernst accepted a teaching position appointment at the University of Göttingen in Leipzig, and soon after married Emma Lohmeyer, the daughter of a surgeon. The Nernsts had five children, three daughters and two sons. In 1894, Nernst was promoted to full professor at Göttingen. At the same time, he also received approval for the creation of a new Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry at the university.

At Göttingen, Nernst wrote a textbook on physical chemistry, Theoretische Chemie vom Standpunkte der Avogadroschen Regel und der Thermodynamik (Theoretical Chemistry from the Standpoint of Avogadro's Rule and Thermodynamics ). Published in 1893, it had an almost missionary objective: to lay out the principles and procedures of a new approach to the study of chemistry. The book became widely popular, going through a total of fifteen editions over the next thirty-three years.

During his tenure at Göttingen, Nernst investigated a wide variety of topics in the field of solution chemistry . In 1893, for example, he developed a theory for the breakdown of ionic compounds in water, a fundamental issue in the Arrhenius theory of ionization. According to Nernst, dissociation, or the dissolving of a compound into its elements, occurs because the presence of nonconducting water molecules causes positive and negative ions in a crystal to lose contact with each other. The ions become hydrated by water molecules, making it possible for them to move about freely and to conduct an electric current through the solution. In later work, Nernst developed techniques for measuring the degree of hydration of ions in solutions. By 1903, Nernst had also devised methods for determining the pH value of a solution, an expression relating the solution's hydrogen-ion concentration (acidity or alkalinity).

In 1889, Nernst addressed another fundamental problem in solution chemistry: precipitation. He constructed a mathematical expression showing how the concentration of ions in a slightly soluble compound could result in the formation of an insoluble product. That mathematical expression is now known as the solubility product, a special case of the ionization constant for slightly soluble substances. Four years later, Nernst also developed the concept of buffer solutions - solutions made of bases, rather than acids - and showed how they could be used in various theoretical and practical situations.

Around 1905, Nernst was offered a position as professor of physical chemistry at the University of Berlin. This move was significant for both the institution and the man. Chemists at Berlin had been resistant to many of the changes going on in their field, and theoretical physicist and eventual Nobel Prize winner Max Planck had recommended the selection of Nernst to revitalize the Berlin chemists. The move also proved to be a stimulus to Nernst's own work. Until he left Göttingen, he had concentrated on the reworking of older, existing problems developed by his predecessors in physical chemistry. At Berlin, he began to search out, define, and explore new questions. Certainly the most important of these questions involved the thermodynamics of chemical reactions at very low temperatures.

Attempting to extend the Gibbs-Helmholtz equation and the Thomsen-Berthelot principle of maximum work to temperatures close to absolute zero - the temperature at which there is no heat - Nernst eventually concluded that it would be possible to reach absolute zero only by a series of infinite steps. In the real world, that conclusion means that an experimenter can get closer and closer to absolute zero, but can never actually reach that point. Nernst first presented his "Heat Theorem," as he called it, to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences in December of 1905. It was published a year later in the Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. The theory is now more widely known as the Third Law of Thermodynamics. In 1920, Nernst was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in recognition of his work on this law.

The statement of the Heat Theorem proved to be an enormous stimulus for Nernst's colleagues in Berlin's chemistry department. For at least a decade, the focus of nearly all research among physical chemists there was experimental confirmation of Nernst's hypothesis. In order to accomplish this objective, new equipment and new techniques had to be developed. Nernst's Heat Theorem was eventually integrated into the revolution taking place in physics, the development of quantum theory. At the time he first proposed the theory, Nernst had ignored any possible role of quantum mechanics. A few years later, however, that had all changed. In working on his own theory of specific heats, for example, Albert Einstein had quite independently come to the same conclusions as had Nernst. He later wrote that Nernst's experiments at Berlin had confirmed his own theory of specific heats. In turn, Nernst eventually realized that his Heat Theorem was consistent with the dramatic changes being brought about in physics by quantum theory. Even as his work on the Heat Theorem went forward, Nernst turned to new topics. One of these involved the formation of hydrogen chloride by photolysis, or chemical breakdown by light energy. Chemists had long known that a mixture of hydrogen and chlorine gases will explode when exposed to light. In 1918, Nernst developed an explanation for that reaction. When exposed to light, Nernst hypothesized, a molecule of chlorine (Cl₂) will absorb light energy and break down into two chlorine atoms (2Cl). A single chlorine atom will then react with a molecule of hydrogen (H₂), forming a molecule of hydrogen chloride and an atom of hydrogen (HCl + H). The atom of hydrogen will then react with a molecule of chlorine, forming a second molecule of hydrogen chloride and another atom of chlorine. The process is a chain reaction because the remaining atom of chlorine allows it to repeat.

In 1922, Nernst resigned his post at Berlin in order to become president of the Physikalisch-technische Reichsanstalt. He hoped to reorganize the institute and make it a leader in German science, but since the nation was suffering from severe inflation at the time, there were not enough funds to achieve this goal. As a result, Nernst returned to Berlin in 1924 to teach physics and direct the Institute of Experimental Physics there until he retired in 1934.

In addition to his scientific research, Nernst was an avid inventor. Around the turn of the century, for example, he developed an incandescent lamp that used rare-earth oxide rather than a metal as the filament. Although he sold the lamp patent outright for a million marks, the device was never able to compete commercially with the conventional model invented by Thomas Alva Edison . Nernst also invented an electric piano that was never successfully marketed.

The rise of the Nazi party in 1933 brought an end to Nernst's professional career. He was personally opposed to the political and scientific policies promoted by Adolf Hitler and his followers and was not reluctant to express his views publicly. In addition, two of his daughters had married Jews, which contributed to his becoming an outcast in the severely anti-Semitic climate of Germany at that time.

Walther Nernst was one of the geniuses of early twentieth-century German chemistry, a man with a prodigious curiosity about every new development in the physical sciences. He was a close colleague of Einstein, and was a great contributor to the organization of German science - he was largely responsible for the first Solvay Conference in 1911, for example. In his free time, he was especially fond of travel, hunting, and fishing. Nernst also loved automobiles and owned one of the first to be seen in Göttingen. Little is known about his years after his retirement. Nernst died of a heart attack on November 18, 1941, at his home at Zibelle, Oberlausitz, near the German-Polish border.

Further Reading

Concise Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Macmillan, 1981, pp. 499-501.

Farber, Eduard, editor, Great Chemists, Interscience, 1961, pp. 1203-1208.

Gillispie, Charles Coulson, editor, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 15, Scribner, 1975, pp. 432-453.

Mendelsohn, Kurt, The World of Walther Nernst: The Rise and Fall of German Science, 1864-1941, Pittsburgh, 1973.

Einstein, Albert, "The Work and Personality of Walther Nernst," in Scientific Monthly, February, 1942, pp. 195-196.

Partington, James R., "The Nernst Memorial Lecture," in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1953, pp. 2853-2872.

Walther Nernst
Born	25 June 1864(1864-06-25) Briesen, West Prussia/Pomerania
Died	18 November 1941 (aged 77) Zibelle, Lusatia, Germany
Nationality	Germany
Fields	Physical chemistry, Physics
Institutions	University of Göttingen University of Berlin University of Leipzig
Alma mater	University of Zürich University of Berlin University of Graz University of Wurzburg
Doctoral advisor	Friedrich Kohlrausch
Other academic advisors	Ludwig Boltzmann
Doctoral students	Sir Frances Simon Richard Abegg Irving Langmuir Leonid Andrussow Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer Frederick Lindemann William Duane
Other notable students	Gilbert N. Lewis Max Bodenstein Robert von Lieben Kurt Mendelssohn Theodor Wulf Emil Bose Hermann Irving Schlesinger Claude Hudson
Known for	Third Law of Thermodynamics Nernst lamp Nernst equation Nernst glower Nernst effect Nernst heat theorem Nernst potential Nernst-Planck equation
Influenced	J. R. Partington
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in chemistry (1920)
Signature

Walther Hermann Nernst (25 June 1864 – 18 November 1941) was a German physical chemist and physicist who is known for his theories behind the calculation of chemical affinity as embodied in the third law of thermodynamics, for which he won the 1920 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Nernst helped establish the modern field of physical chemistry and contributed to electrochemistry, thermodynamics, solid state chemistry and photochemistry. He is also known for developing the Nernst equation.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early years 1.2 Career 1.3 Personal life 2 Publications 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

Biography

Early years

Nernst was born in Briesen in West Prussia (now Wąbrzeźno, Poland) as son of Gustav Nernst, who was a district judge. Nernst went to elementary school at Graudentz. His mother is said to have been Polish by the Polish newsmagazine wprost.^[1] He studied physics and mathematics at the universities of Zürich, Berlin, Graz and Wuerzburg, where he graduated in 1887.

Career

After some work at Leipzig, he founded the Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry at Göttingen. Nernst invented, in 1897 an electric lamp, using an incandescent ceramic rod. His invention, known as the Nernst lamp, was the successor to the carbon lamp and the precursor to the incandescent lamp. Nernst researched osmotic pressure and electrochemistry. In 1905, he established what he referred to as his "New Heat Theorem", later known as the Third law of thermodynamics (which describes the behavior of matter as temperatures approach absolute zero). This is the work for which he is best remembered, as it provided a means of determining free energies (and therefore equilibrium points) of chemical reactions from heat measurements. Theodore Richards claimed Nernst had stolen the idea from him, but Nernst is almost universally credited with the discovery.^[2]

In 1911, with Max Planck, he is the main organizer of the first Solvay Conference in Brussels.

In 1920, he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in recognition of his work in thermochemistry. In 1924, he became director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry at Berlin, a position from which he retired in 1933. Nernst went on to work in electroacoustics and astrophysics.

Nernst developed an electric piano, the "Neo-Bechstein-Flügel" in 1930 in association with the Bechsteinand Siemens companies, replacing the sounding board with radio amplifiers. The piano used electromagnetic pickups to produce electronically modified and amplified sound in the same way as an electric guitar.

His device, a solid-body radiator with a filament of rare-earth oxides, that would later be known as the Nernst glower, is important in the field of infrared spectroscopy. Continuous ohmic heating of the filament results in conduction. The glower operates best in wavelengths from two to 14 micrometers.

Personal life

Nernst married in 1892 to Emma Lohmeyer with whom he had two sons and three daughters. He was a vocal critic of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, and two daughters married Jewish men. In 1933, the rise of Nazism led to the end of Nernst's career as a scientist. Nernst died in 1941 and is buried near Max Planck in Göttingen, Germany.

Publications

• Walther Nernst, "Reasoning of theoretical chemistry: Nine papers (1889-1921)" (Ger., Begründung der Theoretischen Chemie : Neun Abhandlungen, 1889-1921). Frankfurt am Main : Verlag Harri Deutsch, c. 2003. ISBN 3817132905
• Walther Nernst, "The theoretical and experimental bases of the New Heat Theorem" (Ger., Die theoretischen und experimentellen Grundlagen des neuen Wärmesatzes). Halle [Ger.] W. Knapp, 1918 [tr. 1926]. [ed., this is a list of thermodynamical papers from the physico-chemical institute of the University of Berlin (1906-1916); Translation available by Guy Barr LCCN 27-2575
• Walther Nernst, "Theoretical chemistry from the standpoint of Avogadro's law and thermodynamics" (Ger., Theoretische Chemie vom Standpunkte der Avogadroschen Regel und der Thermodynamik). Stuttgart, F. Enke, 1893 [5th edition, 1923]. LCCN po28-417

See also

• C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik

References

1. ^ http://www.wprost.pl/ar/140524/Z-ziemi-polskiej-do-Nobla/
2. ^ Coffey, Patrick (2008). Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 78–81. ISBN 0195321340. 

Further reading

• Barkan, Diana Kormos (1998). Walther Nernst and the Transition to Modern Physical Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052144456X. 
• Bartel, Hans-Georg; Huebener, Rudolf P. (2007). Walther Nernst. Pioneer of Physics and of Chemistry. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 9812565604. 
• Mendelssohn, Kurt Alfred Georg (1973). The World of Walther Nernst: The Rise and Fall of German Science. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0333148959. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Walther Hermann Nernst

• Katz, Eugenii. "Hermann Walther Nernst". http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/nernst.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-05. 
• "Nernst: architect of physical revolution". Physics World. September 1999. http://physicsweb.org/article/review/12/9/3.  - Review of Diana Barkan's Walther Nernst and the Transition to Modern Physical Science
• "Hermann Walther Nernst, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1920 : Prize Presentation". Presentation Speech by Professor Gerard de Geer, President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
• Schmitt, Ulrich, "Walther Nernst". Physicochemical institute, Göttingen

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Chemistry Jacobus van 't Hoff (1901) · Emil Fischer (1902) · Svante Arrhenius (1903) · William Ramsay (1904) · Adolf von Baeyer (1905) · Henri Moissan (1906) · Eduard Buchner (1907) · Ernest Rutherford (1908) · Wilhelm Ostwald (1909) · Otto Wallach (1910) · Marie Curie (1911) · Victor Grignard / Paul Sabatier (1912) · Alfred Werner (1913) · Theodore Richards (1914) · Richard Willstätter (1915) · Fritz Haber (1918) · Walther Nernst (1920) · Frederick Soddy (1921) · Francis Aston (1922) · Fritz Pregl (1923) · Richard Zsigmondy (1925) Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

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