Svante August Arrhenius

Svante August Arrhenius

Svante August Arrhenius was born at Uppalsa, Sweden, on February 19,1859 His intelligence and creativity were apperent nt from an early age--he taughthimself to read when he was three Although credi ted with many scientificinnovations, he remains best known for his ionic theory of solutions, For which hewas awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1903 Arrhenius henius died inStockholm on October 2, 1927

Science is a human endeavor subject to human frailties and governed bypersonalities, politics, and prejudice ces. One of the best illustrations of the oftenbumpy path of the advancement of scientific knowledge is the story of Swedishchemist Svante Arrhenius. When Arrhenius henius began his doctorate at theUniversity of Uppsala around 1880, he chose to study the passage of electricitythrough solutions. This was a problem that had baffled scientists for a century, Thefirst experiments had been done in the 17 70s by Cavendish, who corn pared theconductivity of salt solutions with that of rain water, using his own physiologicalreaction to the electric shocks he rece ived! Arrhenius had an array of instrumentsto measure electric current, but the process of carefully weighing, meas uring, andrecording data from a multitude of experiments was a tedious one.

After his long series of experimerits were performed, Arrhenius quit his laboratorybench and returned to his country home to try to formulate a model that couldaccount for his data, He wrote, "I got the...

Svante August Arrhenius

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