Carl Theodor Setterberg

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Carl Theodor Setterberg (born April 30, 1853 in Hjerpås , Skaraborgs län , Sweden; † April 7, 1941 in Stockholm , Sweden) was a Swedish chemist and pharmacist.

Setterberg studied at the Pharmaceutical Institute (Farmaceutiska institutet) in Stockholm and passed his pharmacy exam in 1876. From 1879 to 1881 he studied at the Universities of Bonn and Heidelberg (with Robert Wilhelm Bunsen ) and received his doctorate in 1881. Then he was an assistant at the Pharmaceutical Institute in 1881/82. Then he was a commercial chemist in Stockholm.

In 1881 he succeeded in preparing pure cesium in Bunsen's laboratory . That happened as part of his dissertation. Cesium was discovered in 1860 by Bunsen and Kirchhoff in spectral analysis (as was rubidium in 1861, which they also isolated with electrolysis). Setterberg's work was initiated by his Bonn professor August Kekulé . Bunsen's laboratory contained large amounts of waste from the work on isolating lithium from lepidolite in the 1850s . From this Setterberg obtained a mixture of potassium aluminum sulfate and alums of rubidium and cesium. Then he applied the method of fractional crystallization and was able to isolate 10 kg of cesium compounds from 350 kg of alums. At first he tried a reduction of cesium tartrate with carbon (with which Bunsen had been successful with rubidium), but was unsuccessful. He then succeeded in isolating cesium through the electrolysis of cesium cyanide. Setterberg determined the melting point of cesium to be 26 to 27 degrees and the density.

literature

  • Svenska teknologföreningen: Teknisk tidskrift, Volume 71.Svenska teknologföreningen, Norrköping, 1941, p. 196.

Web links

  • Biography and photo , Svenskt porträttgalleri, Volume 23, Stockholm 1903, Project Runeberg (Swedish)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Founded in 1837. In 1968 it was integrated into the Pharmaceutical Faculty in Uppsala.
  2. ↑ Carl Setterberg: About the representation of rubidium and cesium compounds and about the extraction of the metals themselves. In: Justus Liebigs Annalen der Chemie . Volume 221, 1, 1881, pp. 100-116
  3. ↑ Alan Dronsfield, Look who discovered cesium ... , Royal Society of Chemistry, July 1, 2010
  4. ↑ E. Linnemann had success with this method in 1858 in isolating potassium from its cyanide.
personal data
SURNAME Setterberg, Carl Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish chemist and pharmacist
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Hjerpås, Skaraborg County
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1941
Place of death Stockholm , Sweden