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JONS JAKOB See also: Swedish chemist, was See also: born at Vafversunda Sorgard, near See also: Linkoping, Sweden, on the loth (or 29th) of See also: August 1779
.
After attending the gymnasium school at Linkoping he went to See also: Upsala University, where he studied chemistry and See also: medicine, and graduated as M.D. in 1802
.
Appointed assistant professor of botany and See also: pharmacy at See also: Stockholm in the same See also: year, he became full professsor in 1807, and from 1815 to 1832 was professor of chemistry in the See also: Caroline medico-chirurgical institution of that city
.
The Stockholm See also: Academy of Sciences elected him a member in 18o8, and in 1818 he became its perpetual secretary
.
The same year he was ennobled by See also: Charles XIV., who in 1835 further made him a baron
.
His
See also: death occurred at Stockholm on the 7th of August 1848
.
During the first few years of his scientific career See also: Berzelius was mainly engaged on questions of physiological chemistry, but about 1807 he began to devote himself to what he made the chief See also: object of his life—the elucidation of the composition of chemical compounds through study of the See also: law of multiple proportions and the atomic theory
.
Perceiving the exact determination of atomic and molecular weights to be of fundamental importance, he spent ten years in ascertaining that See also: constant for some two thousand See also: simple and compound bodies, and the results he published in 1818 attained a remarkable See also: standard of accuracy, which was still further improved in a second table that appeared in 1826
.
He used See also: oxygen-in his view the See also: pivot round which the whole of chemistry revolves—as the basis of reference for the atomic weights of other substances, and the data on which he chiefly relied were the proportions of oxygen in oxygen compounds, the doctrines of isomorphism, and Gay Lussac's law of volumes
.
When See also: Volta's See also: discovery of the electric cell became known, Berzelius, with W
.
Hisinger (1766-1852), began experiments on the electrolysis of See also: salt solutions, See also: ammonia, sulphuric acid, &c., and later this See also: work led him to his electrochemical theory, a full exposition of which he gave in his memoir on the Theory of Chemical Proportions and the Chemical See also: Action of See also: Electricity (1814)
.
This theory was founded on the supposition that the atoms of the elements are electrically polarized, the See also: positive See also: charge predominating in some and the negative in others, and from it followed his dualistic hypothesis, according to which compounds are made up of two electrically different components
.
At first this hypothesis was confined to inorganic chemistry, but subsequently he extended it to organic compounds, which he saw might similarly be regarded as containing a See also: group or See also: groups of atoms—a compound radicle—in place of simple elements
.
Although his conception of the nature of compound radicles did not long retain general favour-indeed he himself changed it more than once—he is entitled to See also: rank as one of the chief founders of the radicle theory
.
Another service of the utmost importance which he rendered to the study of chemistry was in continuing and extending the efforts of Lavoisier and his associates to establish a convenient See also: system of chemical nomenclature
.
By using the initial letters of the Latin
(occasionally See also: Greek) names of the elements as symbols for them, and adding a small numeral subscript, to show the number of atoms of each See also: present in a compound, he introduced the present system of chemical formulation (see CHEMISTRY)
.
Mention should also be made of the numerous improvements he effected in See also: analytical methods and the technique of the See also: blowpipe (Uber die Anwendung See also: des Lothrohrs, 1820), of his See also: classification of minerals on a chemical basis, and of many individual researches such as those on tellurium, selenium, silicon, thorium, titanium, See also: zirconium and molybdenum, most of which he isolated for the first See also: time
.
Apart from his See also: original See also: memoirs, of which he published over 250, mostly in Swedish in the Transactions of the Stock-holm Academy, his remarkable See also: literary activity is attested by his Lehrbuch der Chemie, which went through five See also: editions (first 1803–1818, fifth 1843–1848) and by his Jahresbericht or See also: annual report on the progress of physics and chemistry, prepared at the instance of the Stockholm Academy, of which he published 27 vols
.
(1821–1848)
.
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