John Kudrysch History of Chemistry
Help Received: Jaffe Book
Marie Curie, a polish physicist, revolutionized and brought radioactive research forward through an incredible amount of dangerous work. Svent Arrhenius is known to be a revolutionary in the sense of introducing physical chemistry into the world. Both of these scientists are great, and at the same time they both had to overcome difficult obstacles to get recognized for how worthy they really were in their field of study. Arrhenius worked tirelessly in order to come up with his theory for his dissertation for his doctoral degree. This effort was met with struggle when people around him, such as Cleve, offered no support simply because it was a theory (1). Many people could not fathom the idea that ions were the sole aspects that took part in the reactions of solution, and even after Arrhenius showed off his dissertation to his university they rejected him. Even though they rejected him they gave him his doctoral because of his effort, but pushed the theory aside completely. For a while he tried selling his thesis off to many scientists, all of whom rejected it entirely or just did not respond (1). It wasn’t until Ostwald was sent the paper that he had gotten any support of his findings. For years, with the support of Ostwald and eventually van’t Hoff, he traveled around and theorized in hopes of having his theory a breakthrough (1). I do not feel that this type of rejection would be met with today. There are many prospects happening in the field of science, and there are experimental chemists and physicists that work tirelessly as well in order to support people’s theories or findings. I feel Arrhenius would have found the help he needed better in today’s world than back then.
Marie Curie hypothesized a new element, which would later become two known as polonium and radium, was the reason behind increased activity in a piece of uranium ore (1). A huge factor that came into the picture, before she could even start the experiment, was support. She had to borrow pitchblende and do all the work by herself with the help of her husband Pierre (1). Through tireless effort she struggled to prove that these elements existed, radium more so than polonium because of Pierre’s death (1). In today’s world this kind of struggle would be hard to comprehend. There are many people out there working under grants and other industry “dimes” in order to reveal or prove the next great breakthrough in science or medicine. If Marie Curie were to be doing this research today it would not only be faster because of the multitude of people working but all the shortcomings, like getting sick and taking breaks, would not be as strenuous on her body. She did the manual labor herself, which is part of the reasons the story is so great.
(1). B. Jaffe. Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry, Dover Publications Inc, New York, USA, (1976) pp. 164-196.