Herman BoerhaaveThis is a featured page

Herman BoerhaaveIn science, Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738) was a Dutch physician and chemist notable for the publications of his 1724 book Elements of Chemistry (Elementa Chemiae), an outgrowth of his lectures at the University of Leyden, in which he outlined influential theories on heat, fire, and expansion of bodies. He is considered one of the pioneers in physical chemistry, for introducing quantitative methods into the measure of temperature and mass and for carrying out some of the first calorimetric research. In his publications, Boerhaave established as physical axiom, or universal proposition, in what came to be known as "Boerhaave's law", which states that: [1]

“Ever body, whether solid or fluid, is augmented in all its dimensions by any increase of its sensible heat.”

This law or axiom of heat was the opening sentence to French chemist Antoine Lavoisier’s 1787 Elements of Chemistry. [2] In his lectures, Boerhaave incorporated many elements of French corpuscular theory, especially French physician and chemist Louis Lémery’s concept of fire. [3] One of his notable students was English physicist and chemist Andrew Plummer, professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh from 1726 to 1755, whose ideas on attractive and repulsive forces involved in chemical affinity had influence on his successors Scotts physician and chemist William Cullen and physicist and chemist Joseph Black.

Boerhaave’s Elements was influential to German polymath Johann Goethe, the founder of human chemistry, who read this work in his early twenties. [4]

Education
Boerhaave completed a PhD in physics, which he obtained in July, 1693, having performed a publick disputation, "de utilitate explorandorum excrementorum in ægris, ut signorum." Later he obtained an MD.

References
1. (a) Boerhaave, Herman. (1724). Institutiones et Experimenta Chemiae, (an unauthorized publication of his chemical lectures at the University of Leyden). Paris.
(b) Boerhaave’s (authorized) Latin version, Elementa Chimiae, appeared in 1732.
(c) Boerhaave’s English version, A New Method of Chemist, translated by Peter Shaw, MD, 2 vols. (London, 1742).
2. Lavoisier, Antoine. (1787). Elements of Chemistry, (pg. 1). Edinburgh: G.G. and J.J. Robinsons.
3. Kim, Mu Gyung. (2003). Affinity, That Elusive Dream – A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution, (section 4.3: Herman Boerhaave, Savante-Chemiste, pgs. 177-88). MIT Press.
4. Duntzer, Heinrich. (1884). Life of Goethe, Volumes 1-2 (pgs. 88-89). Estes.

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