William Hillebrand

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William Hillebrand (back, 2nd from left).

William Francis Hillebrand (born December 12, 1853 in Honolulu , † 1925 ) was a German chemist and mineralogist .

Life

William Francis Hillebrand was the son of the doctor and botanist Wilhelm Hillebrand .

After studying chemistry at the Bergakademie Freiberg , Hillebrand did his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg . He discovered that when uranium ores dissolve, a gas escapes, which he identified as nitrogen using spectroscopic methods . Only years later proved William Ramsay that it was the gas is composed of the solar spectrum known heliumacts. Through an exchange of letters between Ramsay and Hillebrand it is known that the uraninite used by Hillebrand, unlike the Cleveit used by Ramsay, contains up to 10% gaseous nitrogen. This fact is a possible explanation for Hillebrand's misinterpretation.

In 1906 he was accepted into the American Philosophical Society . In 1907 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . Hillebrand was active in the American Chemical Society (ACS) and from 1908 in the National Bureau of Standards as chief chemist.

After studying in Germany, he went to the USA in 1880, where he headed the chemical laboratory of the United States Geological Survey in Denver . His first assistant was Antony Guyard . From 1908 to 1925 he was chief chemist in the National Bureau of Standards.

From 1923 he was the author of the Applied Inorganic Analysis with Gustav Ernst Fredrik Lundell . The work was published after his death in 1929 and has long been the Bible of inorganic chemistry .

During his time as a chemist with the United States Geological Survey, he analyzed many minerals and rocks , including some rare and new minerals. His notoriously meticulous and precise analyzes led to the discovery of several chemical elements in rocks that were not previously suspected there. While analyzing the mineral uraninite ( pitchblende ), he also discovered, to his surprise, a gas that mainly consisted of nitrogen . Hillebrand is one of the first to describe Zunyit .

Works

  • The Analysis of Silicate and Carbonate Rocks. Analysis of the silicate and carbonate rocks. Engelmann, Leipzig 1910. (German)
  • WF Hillebrand, GEF Lundell: Applied Inorganic Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, New York 1929.

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: William F. Hillebrand. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 30, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 114.
  3. ^ The Chemical Work of the US Geological Survey.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 201 kB) In: Science. August 6, 1909.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.sciencemag.org  
  4. ^ Mineralogical chemistry. In: Annual Reports on the Progress of Chemistry. January 1, 1927. doi : 10.1039 / AR9272400292
  5. ^ Fred Eugene Wright: On Three Contact Minerals from Velardeña, Durango, Mexico (Gehlenite, Spurrite and Hillebrande) In: The American Journal of Science. (PDF; 920 kB) New Haven, Connecticut 1908.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hillebrand, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hillebrand, William Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Honolulu
DATE OF DEATH 1925