Svante Arrhenius

Svante Arrhenius (1909)

Svante August Arrhenius ( pronunciation : [ ˌsvanːtə aˈɹeːniɵs ]; * February 19, 1859 on Gut Wik near Uppsala ; † October 2, 1927 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish physicist and chemist. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry . He proved that salts dissolved in water exist as ions . In many cases, the salts do not completely break down into ions in the water, but only - depending on the concentration - to a certain percentage; Arrhenius coined the word activity coefficient for this . In 1896 he was the first to predict global warming due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

Life

Svante August Arrhenius was born the son of Svante Georg Arrhenius (1813–1885) and his wife Carolina Christina (née Thunberg) (1820–1906) on Gut Wik on Lake Mälaren . The father initially worked as a surveyor and later became "academy bailiff" at Uppsala University , where he himself had studied. The poor pay for this post also led him to take the position of manager on the estate not far from Uppsala. The young Svante only spent a short time there, however, and the family moved to Uppsala in the early 1860s. The father's wages had been increased and made the second job as an administrator superfluous.

School and academic training

Svante August was an unusually gifted child. He learned to read at the age of three and subsequently became an excellent mental calculator. At the age of eight he attended the cathedral school in Uppsala, where he particularly excelled in mathematics and physics. Arrhenius graduated from high school in 1876 and began studying mathematics and science at Uppsala University. At that time, Tobias Robert Thalén was teaching physics there. Arrhenius's relationship with his teacher turned out to be difficult, which was one of the reasons why he moved to Stockholm University in 1881 . There he learned from Erik Edlund , who soon encouraged his talented student. Arrhenius received his doctorate in 1884 with the thesis, written in French, Recherches sur la conductibilité galvanique des électrolytes . This already had Arrhenius' big topic as its content, electrolytic dissociation .

At that time, however, scientists could not imagine that free, unbound atoms (with a corresponding charge) could be present in aqueous solutions. Table salt (sodium chloride) consisted of "chlorine and sodium". Sodium and chlorine atoms are highly reactive and it seemed highly unlikely at the time that these atoms could move freely in the solution, since the smell of chlorine should have been detected.

Although the assessment of his dissertation was very poor and did not give him the opportunity to complete his habilitation, his theory nevertheless won a weighty advocate. Wilhelm Ostwald had experimentally confirmed Arrhenius' ideas at the Riga Polytechnic and came to Stockholm personally to meet the young scientist. Ostwald offered Arrhenius a professorship in Riga, which the latter was initially unable to accept due to a serious illness in his father.

Further way

Arrhenius (third from right) in Würzburg near Kohlrausch (early 1887)

Arrhenius (fourth from right) in Graz near Boltzmann (end of 1887)

Arrhenius soon received a generous travel grant from the Swedish Academy of Sciences , which took him to large parts of Europe over the next few years. First he followed Ostwald to Riga (1885) and then from 1886 worked for Friedrich Kohlrausch in Würzburg , where he also became acquainted with his doctoral student Walther Nernst . Since this visit, the physicist Kohlrausch opened up wide areas of a new physical chemistry.

Then his path led him to Ludwig Boltzmann in Graz (1887) and on to van 't Hoff in Amsterdam , then again to Ostwald, who meanwhile taught in Leipzig (both in 1888). After a short stay in his homeland, Arrhenius worked again in Leipzig and Graz in 1889/90. These stations ended the multi-year wandering life, because in 1891 Arrhenius accepted a position as a “Laboratory for Physics” at Stockholm University.

He turned down a professorship in Giessen , which he had also been offered. In 1895 his post was converted to a professorship, which he gave up in 1905 - in the meantime already awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1903) - in favor of the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry .

End of life

In old age Arrhenius was forced to invest a lot of effort in administrative tasks due to his numerous offices. In order to be able to devote himself to research and publication work, he did not spare his lifelong robust health. For example, he got up at four o'clock every day in the autumn of 1925 to work on a new edition of Das Werden der Welten . However, at the end of the year he suffered a faint attack from which he did not fully recover. In the spring of 1927 Arrhenius resigned as director of the Nobel Institute and in the summer wrote his unfinished memoirs . At the end of September he struggled with acute intestinal catarrh , the consequences of which he succumbed on October 2, 1927. According to his wishes, he was buried in Uppsala, the city of his youth.

progeny

Arrhenius was married twice. His first wife was Brita Maria Margareta Sophia Rudbeck in 1894. With her he had a son: Olof Arrhenius (born November 2, 1895, † May 8, 1977), biochemist. The marriage ended in divorce in 1896. His second wife was Maria Johansson (1871–1957) in 1905. The couple had their son Sven (1909–1991) and two daughters.

Scientific work

Arrhenius was a very versatile scientist who conducted research in fields as diverse as physical chemistry, meteorology , geophysics , physiology, and cosmology . His most important achievement is the elaboration of the fundamentals of electrolytic dissociation.

Electrolytic dissociation

Arrhenius made a particular contribution to the theory of electrolytic dissociation .

The work of van 't Hoff, by means of which he measured the ebullioscopic properties in liquids such. B. Increase in vapor pressure and lowering of the freezing point with acids, bases and salts found deviations from a calculated molecular composition, confirmed the theory of Arrhenius. Richard Abegg was able to prove through precise measurements of aqueous cane sugar and potassium chloride solutions that potassium chloride actually had to be dissociated into ions and that the dissociation values ​​from freezing point depressions agreed well with the conductivity measurements at the same concentrations.

After knowing these writings, Arrhenius wrote a short article explaining the dissociation theory. In this work Arrhenius used the word activity coefficient instead of the word dissociation coefficient . The dissociated fission products of a salt are the ions and the activity coefficient indicates the proportion of ions in relation to all particles of this type. Arrhenius also comes to the conclusion from the conductivity measurements that in very high dilution the activity coefficient tends towards 1 and thus all salts, acids and bases are completely dissociated into ions in highly diluted solutions. In the case of concentrated solutions, the activity coefficient is less than 1, i.e. that is, not all salt particles, acids, bases are dissociated into ions.

Arrhenius gave a simple formula for determining the degree of dissociation for 1,1-electrolytes for conductivity measurements:

${\displaystyle \alpha =\Lambda _{\rm {m}}/\Lambda _{0}}$

It is the degree of dissociation ( activity coefficient ) of the salt (the acid, base), the molar equivalent conductivity , the limiting conductivity at infinite dilution. ${\displaystyle \alpha }$ ${\displaystyle \Lambda _{\rm {m}}}$ ${\displaystyle \Lambda _{0}}$

Arrhenius also assumed that every ion in the salt has a special, individual conductivity character. In the case of salt mixtures, it must be possible to determine this special conductivity character of each ion. We know this rule today as the limit conductivity of the ions at infinite dilution.

kinetics

Arrhenius evaluation graphic

The dependence of the conductivity of electrolytes on temperature had already been thoroughly investigated by Kohlrausch after his first meeting with Arrhenius, but he was able to determine that some electrolytes react with a decrease in conductivity when the temperature rises.

The influence of the reaction rate through the concentration of the ions involved and the temperature was another topic of his work in 1889. The temperature exponentially influences the reaction rate of ions, the concentration of which he was able to control through conductivity measurements. The evaluation method using the Arrhenius equation is generally recognized.

Meteorology and geophysics

Arrhenius also did research on topics relating to the atmosphere and meteorology, such as the aurora borealis, thunderstorms and climatic fluctuations. He assumed that cosmic radiation pressure is transported across space and thus leads to light phenomena such as the aurora borealis. In 1895 he presented a theory on the greenhouse gas effect. Carbon dioxide could absorb the ultra-red heat rays from the light emitted by the earth and a lot of carbon dioxide could heat up the earth's climate. Burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas in particular could increase the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, so that the temperature could rise. He also assumed that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere worked in the same direction as carbon dioxide and could thus reinforce the result. He calculated that a doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere would lead to a global temperature increase of 5 ° C. In his opinion, the vegetation should act as a carbon dioxide regulator. It therefore occupies an important place in the research history of climate change . He found the human, reinforcing influence on the greenhouse effect predominantly positive: "The rise in CO ₂ will allow future people to live under a warmer sky."

physiology

Arrhenius also researched immunochemistry with colleagues and wrote a book about it. However, his theses contradicted Paul Ehrlich's views on immunochemistry.

Cosmogony and cosmology

Publisher's cover of the first German edition: Svante Arrhenius: The idea of ​​the world building in the course of time. The becoming of the worlds. New episode. Leipzig 1908.

Arrhenius dealt intensively with problems of cosmology . In 1906 he founded the doctrine of panspermia , in which the hypothesis is put forward that life came to earth through meteorites . He believed that spores could be transmitted between planets. This idea was later taken up again by the English astronomer Fred Hoyle . In 1903 he published his textbook on cosmic physics .

Honors

Svante Arrhenius family grave

Arrhenius was a member of numerous academies and scientific societies in Sweden and abroad, including the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala (since 1899), the Royal Physiographical Society in Lund (since 1900), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 1901), the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen (since 1901), the Norwegian Academy of Sciences (since 1902), the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Science and Literature in Gothenburg (since 1903), the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1903, Honorary member from 1925), the National Academy of Sciences (1908), the American Philosophical Society (1911) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1912). In 1904 Arrhenius became an honorary member of the Swedish Doctors' Association and in 1920 the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering. In 1902 he was awarded the Royal Society's Davy Medal . In 1911 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences .

On August 8, 1903, the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University awarded Svante Arrhenius an honorary doctorate . A few weeks later he was the first Swede to receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry “in recognition of the extraordinary service he has earned through his theory of electrolytic dissociation for the development of chemistry” . The universities of Cambridge , Oxford , Greifswald , Leipzig , Groningen , Edinburgh and Birmingham also awarded him honorary doctorates.

A Mars crater , the lunar crater Arrhenius and the asteroid (5697) Arrhenius are named after him. The Swedish Chemical Society has awarded the Arrhenius Plaque annually since 1962 for outstanding scientific research in the field of chemistry.

See also : Arrhenius graph  and list of Mars craters / A

Works

• Research on the conductibility of electrolytes . (Completed 1883, printed 1884) - Arrhenius' doctoral thesis. For readers interested in the history of science, the work is u. a. accessible through Ostwald's Classics of Exact Sciences (Volume 160).
• On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground. The London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 5, 237–276 (1896), online ( Memento from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (German: About the influence of carbon dioxide in the air on the soil temperature )
• Lärobok i teoretisk elektrokemi . (1900, German 1901 textbook on electrochemistry , online  - Internet Archive )
• Textbook of cosmic physics . (1903, 2 volumes, Part One  - Internet Archive , Part Two  - Internet Archive )
• Världarnas utveckling (1906)
  • (German 1908 The Becoming of the Worlds . Academic Publishing Company Leipzig, translated from Swedish by L. Bamberger, online  - Internet Archive )
  • The idea of ​​the world structure through the ages. The becoming of the worlds, new sequence . (1908, online  - Internet Archive )
• Immunochemistry. Applications of physical chemistry to the study of physiological antibodies . (1907, online  - Internet Archive )
• Theories of Solutions (1912, online  - Internet Archive )
• Quantitative Laws in Biological Chemistry (1915, online  - Internet Archive )
• Kemien och det moderna livet . (1919, German 1922 chemistry and modern life ).
• Earth and Space (1926).

literature

• Günther Bugge (ed.): The book of great chemists. Volume 2: From Liebig to Arrhenius. Verlag Chemie, Berlin 1930 (6th unaltered reprint. Verlag Chemie, Weinheim et al. 1984, ISBN 3-527-25021-2 ). (The twenty-page Arrhenius biography in this volume was written by Wilhelm Palmaer, a former student of Arrhenius. Suitable for an overview. With regard to the curriculum vitae, gives information that is partly contrary to the work of Riesenfeld).
• Ernst H. Riesenfeld : Svante Arrhenius. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig 1931. (Arrhenius biography with nine illustrations. In addition to the chemist and his work, it also brings the reader a little closer to the person Svante Arrhenius. Regarding the scientific evaluation of Arrhenius's work, out of date due to the year of publication).
• Elisabeth Crawford: Arrhenius. From Ionic Theory to the Greenhouse Effect. Science History Publications, Canton MA 1996, ISBN 0-88135-166-0 ( Uppsala Studies in History of Science 23), (English, 320 pages with many references).
• Alois Kernbauer: Svante Arrhenius' relations with Austrian scholars. Publications from the archive of the University of Graz 21, Graz 1988.

Web links

Commons : Svante Arrhenius  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Svante Arrhenius  - Sources and full texts

• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1903 award ceremony for Svante Arrhenius (English)
• Literature by and about Svante Arrhenius in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Svante Arrhenius in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• The Nobel Prize - Svante August Arrhenius

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rahmstorf, Stefan; Schellnhuber, Hans-Joachim (2012): Climate change. Diagnosis, prognosis, therapy. 7th, completely revised and updated edition. Munich: Beck (Beck'sche Reihe, 2366: Wissen). Page 29.
2. ^ Svante Arrhenius: On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground. In: Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science Series 5, Volume 41, April 1896, pages 237-276. Accessed August 9, 2019 . 
3. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Svante August Arrhenius at academictree.org, accessed on January 1, 2018.
4. ^ Richard Abegg: Freezing point depressions of very dilute solutions . In: Z. phys. Chem. Band 20 , no. 2 , 1896, p. 207-233 .
5. ↑ On the dissociation of substances dissolved in water . Journal of physical chemistry, vol. 1, No. 11-12, 1887, pp. 631-648.
6. ↑ Tim Staeger: The father of the greenhouse effect. In: wetter.tagesschau.de. November 23, 2018, accessed February 7, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Arrhenius (6766 PL) JPL Small-Body Database Browser (accessed April 1, 2010).
8. ↑ Arrhenius badges. Svenska Kemisamfundet, accessed on September 6, 2019 . 
9. ↑ translated from English: Immunochemistry . (1907, online  - Internet Archive )