Table of Contents
Preface vii
1 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) (Father of chemistry) 1
2 John Dalton (1766-1844) (Proponent of the concept of the atom) 24
3 Humphry Davy (1778-1829) (The great discoverer and showman) 34
4 Jons Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) (Swedish pioneer who wrote the first chemistry text book) 57
5 Michael Faraday (1791-1867) (The greatest scientist of all time) 69
6 Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882) (The one who made the first organic compound) 96
7 August Kekule (1829-1896) (First to predict organic structures) 107
8 Dmitri Tvanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) (Designer of the greatest table) 118
9 Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff (1852-1911) (First Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) 135
10 Emil Fischer (1852-1919) (A multi-faceted organic chemist) 146
11 Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) (High priest of physical chemistry) 155
12 Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) (Some compounds dissociate, and some cause climate change) 166
13 Alfred Werner (1866-1919) (Inorganic Kekule) 180
14 Richard Willstätter (1872-1942) (Ecstasy and Agony of Willstatter) 192
15 Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875-1946) (The 20th century chemical genius who did not get the Prize) 202
16 Robert Robinson (1886-1975) (The quintessential organic chemist) 226
17 Christopher Kelk Ingold (1893-1970) (Founder of physical organic chemistry) 235
18 Henry Eyring (1901-1981) (A simple man with an active mind) 246
19 Linus Pauling (1901-1994) (The irrepressible scientist and crusader, with two unshared Nobel prizes) 256
20 Robert Bums Woodward (1917-1979) (Artist in organic synthesis) 284
21 Frederick Sanger (1918-2013) (A modest man with two Nobel prizes in chemistry) 299