16
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Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is often credited with the idea of communication satellites. link That was in 1945, long before any artificial satellite had been launched in reality.
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14
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Who was the first to weigh chemical reaction products?
We shall never know who was first. The term "stoichiometry" was introduced by Richter in The Art of Measuring the Chemical Elements only in 1792, but the practice long predates modern chemistry. It ...
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13
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Why is Mendeleev credited with the discovery of the periodic table much more often than Meyer?
The timeline is well-known, even Wikipedia has a specific article on History of the Periodic Table. Several people suggested some version of the periodic law in 1860-s before Mendeleev, including ...
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11
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When was nicotine identified as an addictive substance?
It is a blunder, but there is a saving grace to it, even two. Nicotiana is the Latin name of tobacco, and it was in use as early as 16th century, and not just by botanists. Moreover, for the first 50 ...
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10
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What inspired Nicholson to break water into hydrogen and oxygen with electricity?
Mander's Carnocycle blog has a post Carlisle, Nicholson and the discovery of electrolysis with a detailed account of the story. I will only give the highlights.
On March 20th, 1800 Volta wrote to ...
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9
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Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
One such case comes to my mind: Jules Verne's novel Green ray (1882). Jules Verne popularized this rare phenomenon, and it seems that it has not been scientifically studied before. After Jules Verne ...
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8
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Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
Paul Krugman's research was caused by Isaac Azimov's Foundation novels.
(For this answer, you have to accept economics as a science and you have to accept "caused scientists to do real research" in ...
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8
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Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
While it may not be research exactly, the fictional cases of Sherlock Holmes did actually influence the way real world police agencies and detectives approached forensic science.
Sir Arthur Conan ...
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7
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Why Saytzeff and Zaitsev Rules are named differently?
In German language, "Z" is pronounced like English "ts", and "S" is pronounced like English "z". So a German reader would pronounce “Saytzeff” close to his Russian name, Зайцев.
So “Saytzeff” is ...
7
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When was the geometric structure of a water molecule discovered?
Császára et al. J. Chem. Phys. 122, 214305 (2005) has a nice table of determination of the bond angle of water per year (missing probably Linus Pauling first predicting 90° from approximations in ...
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6
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Why Saytzeff and Zaitsev Rules are named differently?
The rule is named after the Russian chemist Александр Михайлович Зайцев. He studied in Germany and wrote most of his papers in German, spelling his name consistently as “Saytzeff”. Zaytsev or Zaitsev ...
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6
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How did chemists figure out atomic weights, when hydrogen, etc., were first discovered?
The question would not have made sense in 1766, and for a while after. At the time chemistry was still transitioning from the dominance of alchemic ideas, notation and terminology. Lavoisier's 1789 ...
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6
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What is the origin of "ortho-," "meta-," "para-," in chemistry?
Wilhelm Körner between 1866-1874 was the first to use it to differentiate isomers of benzene rings. Since the Greek suffixes are fairly vague he chose them arbitrary. Its interesting he used orth- ...
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6
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How did Meyer know atomic volumes to plot them just before Mendeleev's periodic table?
Good question. I had to look up his original paper which is freely available on Google Books and Hathi Trust. The paper is "Die Natur der chemischen Elemente als Function ihrer Atomgewichte; von ...
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6
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When was mercury given its name?
Mercury was initially known Hydrargyros (in the times of Aristotle) and later known in its liquid state as Argenturn Vivurn translated “alive silver” or in English as “quicksilver" in the 4th ...
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6
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What is the evidence for the existence of Geber?
See Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (2013, The University of Chicago Press), page 33-on for Jabir and the Jabirian Corpus:
"a person who played as large a role in Arabic alchemy as ...
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6
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What rule or rules did Madelung discover, exactly?
The only relevant section in E. Madelung's edited book, Die mathematischen Hilfsmittel der Physikers, Springer: Berlin, 1936 is a small paragraph. It seems Madelung just called this for electron book-...
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5
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Before the discovery of the neutron, how did scientists explain standard atomic weights?
Historically, the discovery of naturally-occurring isotopes of chemical elements by means of the mass-spectrograph provided a correct explanation for the fractional character of the experimentally-...
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Was carbon dioxide also called carbonic acid historically?
Yes. The Oxford English Dictionary gives instances of the term "Carbonic acid" meaning CO${}_2$ as old as about 1800. By 1900, the term "carbonic acid gas" was in common use for CO${}_2$ (my father ...
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5
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What books did Lavoisier read?
There is online a Panopticon Lavoisier which is a tool for searching the Archives de l’Académie des sciences, Fonds Lavoisier.
The link to "library"
is introduced thus:
The catalogue of ...
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5
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Were Michael Sendivogius findings in Chemistry considered by him to be Alchemy?
He referred to his work as alchemy.
Further I liberally do grant and promise you a communication of more Notions than your Patron hath yet imparted to you, concerning as well the theoretical as the ...
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5
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Are there substances that were initially thought to be elements but are actually compounds?
"Are there substances that were initially thought to be elements but are actually compounds?"
Good candidates for "substances initially thought to be elements but actually compounds&...
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5
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What is the iodine fax process mentioned in Vannevar Bush's "As we may think"?
I suspect that Bush meant things like the Fultograph (as one example). They used paper that had been soaked in potassium iodide and starch. When electricity is passed through the paper, the iodine is ...
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4
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What is the etymology of lower case p as the operator for the negative of the common logarithm?
How about this...
pH
1909, from German PH, introduced by S.P.L. Sörensen, from P, for German Potenz "potency, power" + H, symbol for the hydrogen ion that determines acidity or alkalinity.
...
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4
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Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
There was a boy born on October 5, 1882 who read The War of the worlds (1897, 1898) by H.G. Wells, at age 16 and became interested in space, which led to an experience on October 19, 1899.
On this ...
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Has science fiction ever caused scientists to do real research?
The Alcubierre drive concept. Miguel Alcubierre published his first and only paper on the concept while still a PhD student, stating that he drew inspiration from the Star Trek television series. (See ...
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4
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Looking for books on the history of chemistry?
I recommend Norton's History of Chemistry by William Brock.
For a history of the periodic table try my own:
Eric Scerri, The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance, OUP, 2007.
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Looking for books on the history of chemistry?
I agree that there are (surprisingly?) few books on the history of chemistry.
The most succinct one is probably C. Cobb, H. Goldwhite; "Creations of Fire - Chemistry's Lively History from Alchemy to ...
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What was Pauling's claim about vitamin C?
Among other things (I was present at one of Pauling's lectures), Pauling used examples of Vitamin C levels in various mammals as evidence that humans should use more.
FWIW, it was the opinion of most ...
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