Jöns Jacob Berzelius

Who Gave Chemistry Its Alphabet · Chemist · 1779–1848

Who weighed two thousand compounds until the numbers would not move, gave chemistry the system of letters and figures it still writes in, and proposed a theory of what holds a compound together that worked perfectly for salts and was destroyed by an experiment on an organic one.

Who was Berzelius?

Jöns Jacob Berzelius was born in 1779 near Linköping, orphaned young, and trained in medicine at Uppsala before turning to chemistry, which he then largely rebuilt. His method was analysis carried out with a patience nobody had brought to it before: over some twenty years he analysed around two thousand compounds and established the atomic weights of about forty-five elements, correcting Dalton's figures wherever they disagreed with the balance, which was often. He discovered cerium, selenium and thorium, and was the first to isolate silicon and zirconium. In 1813 he introduced the notation chemistry has used ever since — one or two letters taken from an element's Latin name, with figures to say how many atoms of each — replacing the alchemical symbols and the competing schemes that had made a formula unreadable outside its author's country. He coined the words isomerism and catalysis for phenomena he was the first to describe properly. His theory of chemical combination, electrochemical dualism, was published in 1819: every compound consists of an electropositive constituent joined to an electronegative one, and it is their opposite electrical characters that hold them together. For salts it is very nearly the modern account. What broke it was organic chemistry. In 1834 Jean-Baptiste Dumas showed that chlorine can substitute for hydrogen in an organic compound — an electronegative atom taking the place of an electropositive one, with the substance's character scarcely altered — which dualism cannot allow. Berzelius fought the result for the rest of his life and lost, and by his death in 1848 the most authoritative chemist in Europe had become the most conspicuously outflanked.

Major achievements

• Determined the atomic weights of about forty-five elements by analysis of unmatched accuracy
• Invented the modern notation of chemical symbols and formulae, in 1813
• Discovered cerium, selenium and thorium; first isolated silicon and zirconium
• Proposed electrochemical dualism — compounds held together by opposite electrical character
• Coined the terms isomerism and catalysis, and described both phenomena

Life in brief

• 1779 — Born near Linköping: Orphaned before he was ten.
• 1803 — Cerium discovered: With Hisinger, at Stockholm.
• 1813 — The notation: Letters and figures replace the alchemical symbols.
• 1818 — The atomic weight tables: Some forty-five elements, weighed and re-weighed.
• 1819 — Electrochemical dualism: Electropositive joined to electronegative.
• 1834 — Dumas's substitution: Chlorine takes hydrogen's place. Dualism cannot allow it.
• 1848 — Dies at Stockholm: Still arguing against substitution.

Explore the life of Berzelius — five chapters

1. Orphaned Twice, and a Talent for Weighing — Linköping to Stockholm
2. The Alphabet — 1813, and the notation everybody still uses
3. New Elements, and Two New Words — Cerium, selenium, thorium, silicon — and isomerism and catalysis
4. Electrochemical Dualism — A theory that was right about salts and wrong about carbon
5. What He Left Behind Him — Wöhler, Mitscherlich, and a marriage at fifty-six

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