Classic Papers from the History of Chemistry
(and Some Physics too)

"Reading all the good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries." -- René Descartes

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Carmen Giunta and I keep each other informed of our parallel work in posting classic chemistry papers. His classic papers page has additional papers to the ones on this site. His site is thematically organized and links back to the papers posted here. I intend to continue posting the papers I transcribe in a more-or-less chronological order.

Carmen's top page has additional history of chemistry information and links. I recommend you give his site a visit.

You may also be interested in my Chemists' Photo Gallery.

Primary Articles (almost all are excerpted)

1. c. 50 B.C. - Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
2. An excerpt of De Rerum Natura
3. 15?? - an example of Paracelsus' alchemical writing
4. 1677 - Roemer on the speed of light
5. 1749 - Benjamin Franklin "Experiments and Observations on Electricity"
6. 1763 - Boscovich develops theory of point-like atoms
7. 1772 - Priestley on making carbonated water
8. 1775, 1777 - Lavoisier on the composition of the atmosphere
9. 1798 - Count Rumford on heat
10. 1800 - Volta on the battery
11. 1807 - Thomson on Dalton's Atomic Theory
12. 1808 - Davy discovers sodium and potassium
13. 1808 - Thomson "On Oxalic Acid"
14. 1808 - Wollason "On Super-acid and Sub-acid Salts"
15. 1811 - Avogadro's Essay
16. 1811 - Davy on chlorine
17. 1823 - Faraday liquifies chlorine
18. 1828 - Wöhler on Urea
19. 1829 - Brownian Motion
20. 1834 - Faraday on electrolysis
21. 1840 - Hess' Law
22. 1845 - Joule on the mechanical equivalent of heat
23. 1858 - Cannizzaro's Sketch of a Course of Chemical Philosophy
24. 1860 - Kirchhoff & Bunsen on chemical analysis by spectra
25. 1864 - Waage & Guldberg on the Law of Mass Action
26. 1865 - Loschmidt on the size of an air molecule
27. September 1874 - van 't Hoff on the tetrahedral carbon atom
28. November 1874 - LeBel on the tetrahedral carbon atom
29. 1877 - The Discovery of Gallium
30. 1879 - The Discovery of Scandium
31. 1881 - Helmholtz's Faraday Lecture
32. 1886 - The Discovery of Germanium
33. 1887 - Arrhenius on electrolytic dissociation
34. 1887 - van 't Hoff on osmosis
35. 1888 - Ostwald's dilution law
36. 1894 - Ostwald on catalysis
37. 1894 - Stoney uses the term electron
38. 1895 - Perrin on cathode rays
39. 1897 - the Zeeman effect
40. 1899 - Rutherford discovers Alpha and Beta radiation
41. 1899 - Thomson "On the Masses of the Ions in Gases at Low Pressures"
42. 1900 - Rutherford discovers half-life
43. 1901 - Planck discovers the quantum
44. 1902 - Kelvin on atomic structure
45. 1904 - Thomson on the structure of the atom
46. 1904 - Nagaoka on the structure of the atom
47. 1906 - Thomson on the number of corpuscles in an atom
48. 1907 - Arrhenius on the Thomson (1904) model of the atom
49. 1909 - Geiger & Marsden discover wide-angle alpha particle scattering
50. 1909 - Sörenson's introduction of pH
51. 1909 - Bjerrum on strong electrolytes
52. 1910 - Geiger determines the most probable angle of alpha scattering
53. 1911 - Rutherford's first announcement of the nucleus concept
54. 1911 - Rutherford's full paper on the discovery of the nucleus
55. 1911 - van den Broek's first letter on the atomic number concept
56. 1913 - Fajans on isotopes
57. 1913 - Geiger and Marsden do an extensive alpha particle scattering survey
58. 1913 - van den Broek's second letter on the atomic number concept
59. 1913 & 1914 - Moseley on the high frequency spectra of the elements
60. 1913 - the Bohr Model of the Atom
61. 1914 - Rutherford follows up his 1911 nucleus paper
62. 1916 - Lewis on the shared electron pair bond
63. 1916 - Kossel on chemical bonding
64. 1919a - Langmuir on Octet Theory
65. 1919b - Langmuir on Octet Theory
66. 1920 - Aston on mass spectroscopy
67. 1920 - Debye explains the origin of the van der Waals force
68. 1920 - Latimer and Rodebush on the Hydrogen Bond
69. 1921 - Bohr on the electronic structure of the periodic table
70. 1921 - Bury on the electronic structure of the periodic table
71. 1922 - Brackett discovers the series named for him
72. 1923 - Brønsted on acids and bases
73. 1923 - Debye & Hückel on strong electrolytes
74. 1924 - Stoner on the correct Electron Distribution in orbitals
75. 1925 - Pauli on the fourth quantum number
76. 1925 - Uhlenbeck & Goudsmit discover spin
77. 1929 - Lennard-Jones predicts the paramagnetism of dioxygen
78. 1932 - Chadwick discovers the neutron (letter)
79. 1932 - Chadwick discovers the neutron (article)
80. 1932 - Pauling on electronegativity
81. 1934 - Fermi mistakenly identifies a transuranic element
82. 1934 - Noddack responds to Fermi on element 93
83. 1934 - Rutherford discovers fusion (letter)
84. 1934 - Rutherford discovers fusion (article)
85. 1939 - Hahn and Strassmann announce the discovery of fission
86. 1939 - the above article in the original German
87. 1939 - Meitner on fission
88. 1939 - Hahn and Strassmann follow up on fission
89. 1939 - Frisch on fission
90. 1939 - Bohr on the Liquid Drop Model of Fission
91. 1949 - Eyewitness account of first atomic reactor

Secondary Articles

1. How the Theory of Solutions Arose

Biographical Articles

1. The Genius of James Clerk Maxwell, Part 2
2. The Genius of James Clerk Maxwell, Part 3

Miscellaneous Articles

1. 1855- Faraday complaining about pollution
2. Birthplace of the Web
3. A Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century Chemical Terms

Copyright © Michael Richmond. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.