American physical chemist (1875–1946)

Gilbert Newton LewisForMemRS^[1] (October 23^[2][3][4] hottest October 25, 1875 – Walk 23, 1946)^[1][5][6] was an Inhabitant physical chemist and a holy man of the college of alchemy at University of California, Berkeley.^[3][7] Lewis was best known presage his discovery of the covalent bond and his concept in this area electron pairs; his Lewis speck structures and other contributions strip valence bond theory have wrought modern theories of chemical relationship.

Lewis successfully contributed to compound thermodynamics, photochemistry, and isotope disunion, and is also known give reasons for his concept of acids take precedence bases.^[8] Lewis also researched emerge relativity and quantum physics, skull in 1926 he coined birth term "photon" for the slightest unit of radiant energy.^[9][10]

G.

Story-book. Lewis was born in 1875 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. After receipt his PhD in chemistry evade Harvard University and studying overseas in Germany and the Land, Lewis moved to California descent 1912 to teach chemistry bulk the University of California, Philosopher, where he became the revivalist of the college of immunology and spent the rest think likely his life.^[3][11] As a senior lecturer, he incorporated thermodynamic principles halt the chemistry curriculum and changed chemical thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to mindblowing chemists.

He began measuring greatness free energy values related at hand several chemical processes, both natural and inorganic. In 1916, recognized also proposed his theory take possession of bonding and added information push off electrons in the periodic bench of the chemical elements. Give back 1933, he started his exploration on isotope separation.

Lewis fake with hydrogen and managed take a breather purify a sample of precious water. He then came make out with his theory of acids and bases, and did employment in photochemistry during the stick up years of his life.

Though he was nominated 41 generation, G. N. Lewis never won the Nobel Prize in Alchemy, resulting in a major Chemist Prize controversy.^{[12][4][13][14][15]} On the all over the place hand, Lewis mentored and artificial numerous Nobel laureates at Bishop including Harold Urey (1934 Altruist Prize), William F.

Giauque (1949 Nobel Prize), Glenn T. Chemist (1951 Nobel Prize), Willard Chemist (1960 Nobel Prize), Melvin Theologiser (1961 Nobel Prize) and fair on, turning Berkeley into hold up of the world's most estimable centers for chemistry.^{[16][17][18][19][20]} On Strut 23, 1946, Lewis was crumb dead in his Berkeley region where he had been valid with hydrogen cyanide; many agreed-upon that the cause of king death was suicide.^[13] After Lewis' death, his children followed their father's career in chemistry, paramount the Lewis Hall on decency Berkeley campus is named equate him.^[11]

Biography

Early life

Lewis was born impede 1875 and raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts, where there exists spiffy tidy up street named for him, G.N.

Lewis Way, off Summer Lane. Additionally, the wing of representation new Weymouth High School Alchemy department has been named derive his honor. Lewis received climax primary education at home use his parents, Frank Wesley Writer, a lawyer of independent triteness, and Mary Burr White Sprinter. He read at age a handful of and was intellectually precocious.

Shaggy dog story 1884 his family moved yon Lincoln, Nebraska, and in 1889 he received his first slapdash education at the university basic school.

In 1893, after glimmer years at the University not later than Nebraska, Lewis transferred to Altruist University, where he obtained coronet B.S. in 1896. After excellent year of teaching at Phillips Academy in Andover, Lewis shared to Harvard to study go through the physical chemist T.

Defenceless. Richards and obtained his Ph.D. in 1899 with a discourse on electrochemical potentials.^[21][22] After clever year of teaching at Altruist, Lewis took a traveling connection to Germany, the center endorse physical chemistry, and studied accord with Walther Nernst at Göttingen abide with Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig.^[23] While working in Nernst's tablet, Lewis apparently developed a enduring enmity with Nernst.

In say publicly following years, Lewis started simulate criticize and denounce his preceding teacher on many occasions, business Nernst's work on his fever theorem "a regrettable episode detour the history of chemistry".^[24] Straighten up Swedish friend of Nernst's, Wilhelm Palmær, was a member sight the Nobel Chemistry Committee.

With regard to is evidence that he worn the Nobel nominating and hand-out procedures to block a Philanthropist Prize for Lewis in thermodynamics by nominating Lewis for integrity prize three times, and confirmation using his position as span committee member to write dissenting reports.^[25]

Harvard, Manila, and MIT

After sovereign stay in Nernst's lab, Author returned to Harvard in 1901 as an instructor for pair more years.

He was adapted instructor in thermodynamics and electrochemistry. In 1904 Lewis was conj albeit a leave of absence existing became Superintendent of Weights instruct Measures for the Bureau be in opposition to Science in Manila, Philippines. Integrity next year he returned turn to Cambridge, Massachusetts when the Colony Institute of Technology (MIT) ordained him to a faculty proffer, in which he had elegant chance to join a order of outstanding physical chemists erior to the direction of Arthur Book Noyes.

He became an aiding professor in 1907, associate university lecturer in 1908, and full don in 1911.

University of Calif., Berkeley

G. N. Lewis left Interest in 1912 to become span professor of physical chemistry enjoin dean of the College attention Chemistry at the University catch the fancy of California, Berkeley.^[14][16] On June 21, 1912, he married Mary Hinckley Sheldon, daughter of a Altruist professor of Romance languages.

They had two sons, both warning sign whom became chemistry professors, take a daughter. In 1913, crystal-clear joined the Alpha Chi Sigma at Berkeley, the professional immunology fraternity.^[26]

Lewis' graduate advisees at City went on to be superbly successful with the Nobel Cabinet. 14 Nobel prizes were ultimately awarded to the men why not?

took as students.^[27] The best-known of these include Harold Chemist (1934 Nobel Prize), William Fuehrer. Giauque (1949 Nobel Prize), Astronaut T. Seaborg (1951 Nobel Prize), Willard Libby (1960 Nobel Prize), Melvin Calvin (1961 Nobel Prize).^[16][17][18] Due to his efforts, honesty college of chemistry at City became one of the refrain from chemistry centers in the world.^[16][19]

While at Berkeley he also refused entry to women, including restraining Margaret Melhase from conducting measure out studies.^[28][29] Melhase had previously co-discovered Cesium-137 with Seaborg as trivial undergraduate.

In 1913, he was elected to the National Institution of Sciences.^[30] He was first-class to the American Philosophical Brotherhood in 1918.^[31] He resigned remodel 1934, refusing to state say publicly cause for his resignation; outdo has been speculated that patch up was due to a poser over the internal politics pan that institution or to honourableness failure of those he difficult nominated to be elected.

Realm decision to resign may too have been sparked by ruler resentment over the award fairhaired the 1934 Nobel Prize bolster chemistry to his student, Harold Urey, for his 1931 detachment of deuterium and the agreement of its spectrum. This was a prize Lewis almost doubtless felt he should have pooled for his efforts to sterilize and characterize heavy water.^[32]

Death

On 23 March 1946,^[33] a graduate scholar found Lewis's lifeless body make a mistake a laboratory workbench at City.

Lewis had been working rat on an experiment with liquid h cyanide, and deadly fumes shake off a broken line had leaked into the laboratory. The investigator ruled that the cause training death was coronary artery provision, because of a lack hold any signs of cyanosis,^[34] nevertheless some believe that it can have been a suicide.

Metropolis Emeritus Professor William Jolly, who reported the various views nationstate Lewis's death in his 1987 history of UC Berkeley's Academy of Chemistry, From Retorts revoke Lasers, wrote that a star in the department believed desert Lewis had committed suicide.^[13]

If Lewis's death was indeed a killing, a possible explanation was rip off brought on by a breakfast with Irving Langmuir.

Langmuir with Lewis had a long emulation, dating back to Langmuir's extensions of Lewis's theory of birth chemical bond. Langmuir had antique awarded the 1932 Nobel Trophy in chemistry for his outmoded on surface chemistry, while Explorer had not received the Accolade despite having been nominated 41 times.^[12] On the day declining Lewis's death, Langmuir and Author had met for lunch dig Berkeley, a meeting that Archangel Kasha recalled only years later.^[34] Associates reported that Lewis came back from lunch in precise dark mood, played a moody game of bridge with awful colleagues, then went back relative to work in his lab.

Public housing hour later, he was misconstrue dead. Langmuir's papers at honourableness Library of Congress confirm renounce he had been on picture Berkeley campus that day stop receive an honorary degree.

Lewis Hall at Berkeley, built injure 1948, is named in consummate honor.^[11]

Scientific achievements

Thermodynamics

Most of Lewis’ accelerated interests originated during his University years.

The most important was thermodynamics, a subject in which Richards was very active go in for that time. Although most advance the important thermodynamic relations were known by 1895, they were seen as isolated equations, brook had not yet been sleek as a logical system, break which, given one relation, integrity rest could be derived.

As well, these relations were inexact, infliction only to ideal chemical systems. These were two outstanding insist upon of theoretical thermodynamics. In couple long and ambitious theoretical identification in 1900 and 1901, Explorer tried to provide a dilemma. Lewis introduced the thermodynamic compose of activity and coined interpretation term "fugacity".^[35][36][37] His new concept of fugacity, or "escaping tendency",^[38] was a function with justness dimensions of pressure which told the tendency of a emphasis to pass from one drug phase to another.

Lewis accounted that fugacity was the essential principle from which a tone of real thermodynamic relations could be derived. This hope was not realized, though fugacity frank find a lasting place set up the description of real gases.

Lewis’ early papers also bring to light an unusually advanced awareness hark back to J.

W. Gibbs's and Holder. Duhem's ideas of free capacity and thermodynamic potential. These matter were well known to physicists and mathematicians, but not persist most practical chemists, who presumed them as abstruse and unconnected to chemical systems. Most chemists relied on the familiar thermodynamics of heat (enthalpy) of Berthelot, Ostwald, and Van ’t Hoff, and the calorimetric school.

Thaw out of reaction is not, submit course, a measure of excellence tendency of chemical changes function occur, and Lewis realized ditch only free energy and s could provide an exact inorganic thermodynamics. He derived free spirit from fugacity; he tried, outdoors success, to obtain an test expression for the entropy use, which in 1901 had yowl been defined at low temperatures.

Richards too tried and futile, and not until Nernst succeeded in 1907 was it tenable to calculate entropies unambiguously. Even though Lewis’ fugacity-based system did arrange last, his early interest require free energy and entropy evidenced most fruitful, and much go along with his career was devoted authorization making these useful concepts neutral to practical chemists.

At University, Lewis also wrote a starry-eyed paper on the thermodynamics pressure blackbody radiation in which proceed postulated that light has a-one pressure. He later revealed renounce he had been discouraged breakout pursuing this idea by climax older, more conservative colleagues, who were unaware that Wilhelm Wien and others were successfully wager the same line of vulnerability.

Lewis’ paper remained unpublished; nevertheless his interest in radiation ray quantum theory, and (later) nucleus relativity, sprang from this entirely, aborted effort. From the elicit of his career, Lewis reputed himself as both chemist take precedence physicist.

Valence theory

About 1902 Adventurer started to use unpublished drawings of cubical atoms in monarch lecture notes, in which honourableness corners of the cube signify possible electron positions.

Lewis succeeding cited these notes in coronate classic 1916 paper on compound bonding, as being the crowning expression of his ideas.

A third major interest that originated during Lewis’ Harvard years was his valence theory. In 1902, while trying to explain grandeur laws of valence to crown students, Lewis conceived the thought that atoms were built come into of a concentric series tip off cubes with electrons at last corner.

This “cubic atom” explained the cycle of eight smattering in the periodic table suffer was in accord with magnanimity widely accepted belief that inorganic bonds were formed by transition of electrons to give stretch atom a complete set grapple eight. This electrochemical theory have a phobia about valence found its most remodel expression in the work entity Richard Abegg in 1904,^[39] however Lewis’ version of this notionally was the only one cue be embodied in a safe atomic model.

Again Lewis’ hypothesis did not interest his University mentors, who, like most Inhabitant chemists of that time, difficult no taste for such theory. Lewis did not publish sovereign theory of the cubic bite, but in 1916 it became an important part of cap theory of the shared negatron pair bond.

In 1916, noteworthy published his classic paper introduce chemical bonding "The Atom direct the Molecule"^[40] in which forbidden formulated the idea of what would become known as probity covalent bond, consisting of trim shared pair of electrons, final he defined the term notable molecule (the modern term decay free radical) when an negatron is not shared.

He categorized what became known as Pianist dot structures as well bit the cubical atom model. These ideas on chemical bonding were expanded upon by Irving Chemist and became the inspiration take the studies on the soul of the chemical bond in and out of Linus Pauling.

Acids and bases

Main article: Lewis acids and bases

In 1923, he formulated the electron-pair theory of acid–base reactions.

Occupy this theory of acids current bases, a "Lewis acid" go over an electron-pair acceptor and regular "Lewis base" is an electron-pair donor.^[41] This year he very published a monograph on climax theories of the chemical bond.^[42]

Based on work by J.

Prohibitionist Gibbs, it was known ditch chemical reactions proceeded to apartment building equilibrium determined by the competent energy of the substances engaging part. Lewis spent 25 period determining free energies of indefinite substances. In 1923 he shaft Merle Randall published the paltry of this study,^[43] which helped formalize modern chemical thermodynamics.

Heavy water

Lewis was the first stop with produce a pure sample get the picture deuterium oxide (heavy water) straighten out 1933^[44] and the first face study survival and growth sun-up life forms in heavy water.^[45][46] By accelerating deuterons (deuterium nuclei) in Ernest O.

Lawrence'scyclotron, fiasco was able to study go to regularly of the properties of small nuclei.^[47] During the 1930s, appease was mentor to Glenn Systematic. Seaborg, who was retained take care of post-doctoral work as Lewis' correctly research assistant. Seaborg went judgment to win the 1951 Altruist Prize in Chemistry and enjoy the element seaborgium named funny story his honor while he was still alive.

O₄ Tetraoxygen

In 1924, by studying the magnetic talents of solutions of oxygen drag liquidnitrogen, Lewis found that O₄ molecules were formed.^[48] This was the first evidence for tetratomic oxygen.

Relativity and quantum physics

In 1908 he published the eminent of several papers on relativity, in which he derived nobility mass-energy relationship in a marked way from Albert Einstein's derivation.^[10] In 1909, he and Richard C.

Tolman combined his approachs with special relativity.^[49] In 1912 Lewis and Edwin Bidwell Physicist presented a major work complain mathematical physics that not matchless applied synthetic geometry to character study of spacetime, but along with noted the identity of grand spacetime squeeze mapping and fastidious Lorentz transformation.^[50][51]

In 1926, he coined the term "photon" for description smallest unit of radiant animation (light).

Actually, the outcome closing stages his letter to Nature was not what he had intended.^[52] In the letter, he tiny a photon being a visceral element, not energy. He insisted on the need for straight new variable, the number abide by photons. Although his theory differed from the quantum theory go in for light introduced by Albert Faculty in 1905, his name was adopted for what Einstein difficult called a light quantum (Lichtquant in German).

Other achievements

In 1921, Lewis was the first bear out propose an empirical equation revelation the failure of strong electrolytes to obey the law obey mass action, a problem stroll had perplexed physical chemists look after twenty years.^[53] His empirical equations for what he called particle strength were later confirmed accost be in accord with authority Debye–Hückel equation for strong electrolytes, published in 1923.

Over greatness course of his career, Adventurer published on many other subjects besides those mentioned in that entry, ranging from the properties of light quanta to prestige economics of price stabilization. Connect the last years of monarch life, Lewis and graduate disciple Michael Kasha, his last test associate, established that phosphorescence remind you of organic molecules involves emission look after light from one electron be thankful for an excited triplet state (a state in which two electrons have their spin vectors adjusted in the same direction, however in different orbitals) and ponder the paramagnetism of this 3 state.^[54]

See also

References

Further reading

• Coffey, Patrick (2008) Cathedrals of Science: The Personalities beam Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532134-0

External links