ipl-logo

How Did Robert Wilhelm Bunsen Contribute To Chemistry

835 Words4 Pages

Robert Wilhelm Bunsen was an influential german chemist that lived during the 1800s. He is known for his significant advances in chemistry in other fields, such contributions towards spectrum analysis , the discovery of Cesium and Rubidium, and his improvement of gas burners in the form of the bunsen burner. Bunsen made significant contributions towards the field of chemistry that remain important to this day. Bunsen was greatly admired in his field for his devotion to chemistry. Robert Bunsen was born on the 30th of March, 1811, in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, in the Confederation of the Rhine. His father was Christian Bunsen, who was a professor of modern languages and librarian at the university of Göttingen. Information on his mother is scarce. He attended elementary and high school in Göttingen, but moved to the town of Holzminden to attend Grammar …show more content…

He then moved back to Göttingen, at the age of 17, to attend the university of Gottingen. He researched chemistry, geology, physics, and mathematics. He won an award for his work on a humidity meter during his time at the university, and graduated with a Ph.D in chemistry at the age of 19. After he graduated, he traveled Europe, working with many great scientists such as Joseph Gay-Lussac, After his travels, he returned to university of Göttingen and began to teach, although he was not payed for his work. While working at the university, he developed a real interest in studying arsenic, and a possible antidote for the poison. In 1834, while working with a physician named Arnold Berthold, he developed the most effect cure for arsenic. He achieved this by adding iron oxide hydrate to a solution that contained arsenic compounds, this causes the arsenic compounds to turn into ferrous arsenate, which is ultimately harmless. This would prove to have been an incredibly valuable endeavor, as nine years later he was injured by an explosion caused by arsenic. The

Open Document