In intellectual rankings, greatest chemist ever is an epitaph given to a person, depending on ranking methodology, some rankings of which are listed below, that classify, list, or describe someone as being the greatest thinker in the field of chemistry of all time.
# | Person | Rankings | Notability | |
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1. | — 94 | (Partington 50:5) | On the basis of Boerhaave's law formulated caloric theory; among numerous other feats, such as playing a key role in the standardization of chemical nomenclature; his 1787 textbook Elements of Chemistry is generally considered to have marked the inception of modern chemistry. | |
2. | — 152 | (Partington 50:1) | Noted for electrical affinity theory (1811), acid base theory (1831), and catalysis theory (1835), among others. | |
3. | — 233 | (1803-1873) | (Partington 50:2) | Considered one of the foremost chemists of the first half of the 19th century, doing a prodigious amount of work in the fields of organic chemistry, agricultural chemistry, and physiological chemistry. |
4. | | (Partington 50:3) | After 1840, Dumas and Liebig were said to have “divided the authority which formerly belonged to Berzelius”. | |
5. | — 56 | (Partington 50:4) | In 1658, built an air pump and began to experimentally determine the gas laws, publishing Boyle’s law in his 1660 treatise Spring of the Air; his 1661 booklet The Sceptical Chymist was a stepping stone away from alchemy to modern chemist, considered by some to be the date of inception of modern chemistry; formulated the first part of the ideal gas law, i.e. Boyle's law (PV = k, at constant temperature). | |
6. | — 322 | (1733-1794) | (Partington 50:7) | In 1774, discovered oxygen, which he called "dephlogistated air", and attempted to redefine the old phlogiston theory in opposition to Lavosier's newer caloric theory. |
7. | — 444 | (1829-1896) | (Partington 50:6) | In 1857, conceived the idea of assigning certain atoms to certain positions within the molecule, connected via “affinity units” (Verwandtschaftseinheiten), based largely on evidence from chemical reactions; in 1865, famously initiated the study of molecular structure when he conceived of the ring structure of benzene while dreaming about a snake biting its tale. |
8. | — 335 | | (Partington 50:8) | Was the first to determine the electrical conductivity of salt solutions; rejected the material theory of heat; experimentally proved the inverse square law; did work on latent heat and specific heat, etc., etc. His first publication was the 1766 On factitious Airs, on the work of Black, Boyle, and others. |
9. | — 125 | (c.500-450BC) | ||
10. | — 475 | (Partington 50:9) | In 1770, made of number of chemical discoveries, e.g. oxygen (before Priestley), chlorine (before Davy), as published in his Chemical Treatise on Air and Fire. | |
11. | (Partington 50:10) | Particularly noted for his 1799 theories on "split affinities". | ||
12. | — 66 | (1778-1829) | (Partington 50:11) | In 1807, discovers that electricity transforms chemicals when he uses Alessandro Volta's newly invented electric pile (1800) to separate salts via electrolysis. |
13. | — 221 | | (Partington 50:12) | In 1802, formulated the second part of the ideal gas law, Gay-Lussac's law (P = kT, at constant volume) |
14 | — 171 | (Partington 50:13) | Father of thermochemistry: In 1761, discovered “latent heat”; invented the “ice calorimeter” in 1782; student of chemical reaction diagram pioneer William Cullen. | |
15. | — 1 | In circa 1808 made the first human affinity table and in 1809 founded the science of human chemistry with the publication of his Elective Affinities, in which he wrote out 36-human chemical reactions based on the science of affinity chemistry (Newton, Geoffroy, Cullen, Bergman, Berthollet, etc.), a publication which, in his own words, he considered his 'best book' or greatest work. [39] | ||
16. | — 190 | | (Partington 50:14) | Founder of pneumatic chemistry; coined the term in circa 1609 “gas”. |
17. | (Partington 50:15) | In 1828, synthesized urea thus initiating the field of organic chemistry. | ||
18. | — 2 | (Partington 50:44) | A life-long passionate student of alchemy, who seeded the chemical revolution with his "Query 31" appended to his 1704 Opticks. | |
19. | — 242 | (1710-1790) | In 1757, pioneered the idea of the "chemical equation" (AB + C → AC + B) based on Geoffroy's affinity table. | |
20. | — 145 | (1766-1844) | (Partington 50:18) | In 1803, he assigned an atomic weight of one to hydrogen, and began determining molecular formulas, such as that the ratio of nitrous anhydride was 2 to 3, giving N2O3. |
21. | Johann Becher (1635-1682) | (Partington 50:43) | ||
22. | (1853-1932) | (Partington 50:45) | ||
23. | — 251 | (1834-1907) | In 1869, formulated the periodic table of elements. | |
24. | — 285 | (1776-1856) | (Partington 50:27) | |
25. | Edward Frankland (1825-1899) | (Partington 50:16) | ||
26. | — 14 | (1596-1650) | (Partington 50:#) | In 1625, developed the hood-and-eye model of atomic bonding, whereby a bond was said to form when the hook of one atom got caught in the eye of another atom; this chemical bond theory was taught up until 1917 (specifically to Linus Pauling). |
27. | — 172 | | (Partington 50:#) | In 1718, during a translation in to French of Newton's Opticks, translated Newton's verbal descriptions of affinity preferences between various chemical into the world's first affinity table, which launched the chemical revolution. |
28. | — 30 | (1592-1655) | (Partington 50:#) | |
29. | — 162 | | (Partington 50:31) | In his 1775 A Dissertation on Elective Attractions, he pioneered the use the single letters (a, b, c, etc.,) and adjacent letters (ab, ac, etc.) to represent single and attached chemical species, respectively, and made the world's biggest affinity table (50-rows, 59 columns) ever published and contains a fold-out page of 64 affinity reaction diagrams. |
30. | — 232 | (1493-1541) | (Partington 50:39) (Croll 6:6) | In 1524, combined Aristotle’s c. 350 BC four element theory with Geber’s c. 790 three principles, to derive a sulphur theory of how wood burned; coining the word gas; had theories on chemical affinity. |
31. | — 203 | (1668-1738) | (Partington 50:37) | Originator of Boerhaave's law (cited on the first page of Lavoisier's treatise); his 1724 book Elements of Chemistry, was the forerunner to Lavoisier's book of the same title. |
32. | Hermes Trismegistus (c.100-175) | (Croll 6:1) | ||
33. | — 279 | (1811-1899) | (Partington 50:21) | |
34. | (1645-1715) | (Partington 50:#) | ||
35. | — 5 | (1839-1903) | In 1876, founded the science of chemical thermodynamics; conceiving of a number of novel applications, such as chemical potential, among others. | |
36. | Avicenna (980-1037) | (Partington 50:36) | ||
37. | (1214-1294) | (Croll 6:4) | ||
38. | — 35 | In 1937, wrote On the Nature of the Chemical Bond, called the "bible" of the modern chemist; after being taught Descartes 1625 "hook-and-eye" bonding theory, while an undergraduate chemical engineering student, in 1917, at Oregon State University. | ||
39. | Georg Stahl (1659-1734) | (Partington 50:30) | ||
40. | Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636) | (Partington 50:24) | ||
41. | — 96 | (Partington 50:24) | ||
42. | — 255 | (c.721-c.815) | (Croll 6:2) | |
43 | — 96 | (1868-1934) | An 2011 8th-ranked "greatest chemist of all time" via Twitter poll vote, by editors of Nature Chemistry. | |
44. | (1232-1315) | (Croll 6:5) | ||
45. | — 163 | | (Partington 50:47) | Noted for conceiving of the Rutherford model of the atom, that of a tiny central nucleus surround by electons. |
46. | — 119 | Chemically extracted uranium from uranium ore, noting that the residual material is more ‘active’ than the extracted pure uranium, concluding that the ore must contain new elements, which led to the discovery of polonium and radium. | ||
47. | — 120 | | (Partington 50:40) | One of the foremost alchemists of the 13th century; one of the earliest theorists on affinity theory. |
48. | — 10 | (384-322BC) | (Partington 50:32) | |
49. | Hermann Kolbe (1818-1884) | (Partington 50:17) | ||
50. | (1827-1907) | (Partington 50:50) | ||
51. | John Mayow (1641-1679) | (Partington 50:25) | ||
52. | Lothar Meyer (1830-1895) | (Partington 50:26) | ||
53 | — 19 | (1635-1703) | (Partington 50:23) | |
54. | Alfred Werner (1866-1919) | (Partington 50:38) | ||
55. | Richard Kirwan (1733-1812) | (Partington 50:28) | ||
56. | Auguste Laurent (1807-1853) | (Partington 50:19) | ||
57. | Thomas Thomson (1773-1852) | (Partington 50:20) | ||
58. | August Hofmann (1818-1892) | (Partington 50:22) | ||
59. | Adolf Baeyer (1835-1917) | (Partington 50:29) | ||
60. | Antoine Fourcroy (1755-1809) | (Partington 50:33) | ||
61. | ||||
62. | — 302 | (1822-1895) | ||
63. | Stephen Hales (1677-1761) | (Partington 50:34) | ||
64. | Leopold Gmelin (1788-1853) | (Partington 50:35) | ||
65. | Morienus (c.640-700) | (Croll 6:3) | ||
66. | Guyton Morveau (1713-1816) | (Partington 50:41) | ||
67. | Thomas Graham (1805-1869) | (Partington 50:42) | ||
68. | Stanislao Cannizzaro (1826-1910) | (Partington 50:46) | ||
69. | Jeremias Richter (1762-1807) | |||
70. |
1. Hermes Trismegistus (c.100-175) (Ѻ) | Egyptian (see: Hermes)
2. Geber | Arabian
3. Morienus (c.640-700) | Roman [2]
4. Roger Bacon | English
5. Ramon Llull | Spanish
6. Paracelsus | German
See main: Partington 50The 50 greatest chemists (by historical citation) according to English chemical thermodynamicist and renowned chemistry historian James Partington’s 1937 A Short History of Chemistry, based on "name index" page citation count, which is the shortened version of his large three-volume treatise (A History of Chemistry), are: [3]
1. Jacob Berzelius (52)
2. Justus Liebig (39)
3. Jean Dumas (38)
4. Robert Boyle (30)
5. Antoine Lavoisier (26)
6. Friedrich Kekule (22)
7. Joseph Priestley (23)
8. Henry Cavendish (21)
9. Carl Scheele (20)
10. Claude Berthollet (19)
11. Humphry Davy (17)
12. Joseph Gay-Lussac
13. Joseph Black (16)
14. Johann Helmont
15. Friedrich Wohler (16)
16. Edward Frankland (15)
17. Hermann Kolbe (15)
18. John Dalton (14)
19. August Laurent (13)
20. Thomas Thomson (13)
21. Robert Bunsen (12)
22. August Hofmann (12)
23. Robert Hooke (12)
24. Michael Faraday (11)
25. John Mayow (11)
26. Lothar Meyer (10)
27. Amedeo Avogadro (10)
28. Richard Kirwan (10)
29. Adolf Baeyer (10)
30. Georg Stahl (9)
31. Torbern Bergman (9)
32. Aristotle (9)
33. Fourcroy (9)
34. Hales (8)
35. Gmelin (8)
36. Avicenna (7)
37. Herman Boerhaave (7)
38. Werner (7)
39. Paracelsus (7)
40. Albertus Magnus (6)
41. Guyton Morveau (6)
42. Graham (6)
43. Johann Becher (6)
44. Isaac Newton (6)
45. Wilhelm Ostwald (6)
46. Cannizzaro (6)
47. Ernest Rutherford (6)
48. J.B. Richter (6)
49. Louis Pasteur (6)
50. Marcellin Berthelot (5)
1. Babylonian chemists
2. Interlude I, philosophers and practitioners
3. Arabic chemists
4. Interlude II, philosophers and alchemists and practical metallurgists
5. Paracelsus
6. Libavius and Jean Beguin
7. Joan van Helmont
8. Rudolf Glauber
9. Robert Boyle
10. Nicolas Lemery
11. Herman Boerhaave
12. Duhamel du Monceau
13. Guillaume-Francois Rouelle
14. Andreas Sigismun Marggraf
15. Mikhail Lomonosov
16. Joseph Black
17. Henry Cavandish
18. Joseph Priestley
19. Carl Scheele
20. Antoine Lavoisier
1. Linus Pauling (16)Everyone else received one vote (in no particular order): Friedrich Wöhler (1), Alfred Werner (1), Henry Moseley (1), Paul Walden (1), Robert Robinson (1), Ludwig Boltzmann (1), Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff (1), Robert Boyle (1), Walther Nernst (1), Svante Arrhenius (1), Shigeru Terabe (1), James Joule (1), Victor Grignard (1), William Perkin (1), Stanislao Cannizzaro (1), Wallace Carothers (1), Emil Fischer (1), Wilhelm Ostwald (1), Ryōji Noyori (1), Paracelsus (1), Louis Pasteur (1), Humphry Davy (1).
2. Dmitri Mendeleyev (11)
3. Antoine Lavoisier (7)
4. Marie Curie (6)
5. R.B. Woodward (4)
6. Michael Faraday (4)
7. Gilbert Lewis (3)
8. Amedeo Avogadro (2)
9. Fritz Haber (2)
10. Jābir ibn Hayyān (2)
11. August Kekulé (2)
12. Niels Bohr (2)
13. E. J. Corey (2)
1. Linus Pauling
2. Gilbert Lewis
3. Willard Gibbs
4. Antoine Lavoisier
5. R.B. Woodward
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