Famous chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius was died on this day in 1848. Swedish chemist who established the beginnings of modern chemistry. Among his contributions are his determination of atomic weights, the replacement of alchemical signs with letters for chemical symbols and the use small numbers to indicate relative proportions the formula of a compound, new analytical methods and an electrochemical theory. He discovered selenium and thorium and co-discovered cerium. He wrote an authoritative two-volume textbook, Lärbok i kemien (1808-12). His students isolated lithium (Johann Awfwedsen), vanadium (Nils Sefström), and several rare earth elements (Carl Mosander). Berzelius used an electric current to determine salts could be split into positive and negative portions. He coined the terms isomerism (1831), catalysis (1835), and allotropy (1840).
August 7th
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