Every scientist has his failures, and now, I'm going to take a look at scientist stories.
Story 1:
Boyle - Skeptical Chemist
Boyle was born on January 25, 1627 in Ireland into a noble family. His father was an earl and the family was wealthy. He was the youngest of fourteen brothers. Boyle in childhood is not particularly smart, speak a little stutter, not much like the lively game, but is very good at learning, like to quietly read and think. He received a good education from a young age, and from 1639 to 1644, he traveled in Europe. During this time, he read many books on natural sciences, including the famous book "Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems" by the astronomer and physicist Galileo. This book made a deep impression on him. His later famous book, The Skeptical Chemist, was modeled after it.
Due to the war, the death of his father, and the decline of his family, he returned home in 1644 to live with his sister in London. There he began to study medicine and agriculture. During his studies, he was exposed to a lot of chemical knowledge and chemical experiments, and soon became a well-trained chemical experimenter, as well as a creative theorist. During this period, he organized a scientific society with many scholars, conducting weekly seminars that focused on the latest developments in the natural sciences and the problems encountered in the laboratory. Boyle called this organization the "invisible university". This society was the forerunner of the famous "Royal Society", which aimed at promoting the natural sciences. Boyle was an important member of the Society. As the Society's chapter was located in Oxford, Boyle moved to Oxford in 1654, where he established a well-equipped laboratory and employed some very talented scholars as assistants, leading them to conduct a variety of scientific research. Many of his scientific achievements were made here. The epoch-making book, The Skeptical Chemist, was completed here. The book is written in the genre of a dialogue between four philosophers who are arguing about a problem: the Skeptical Chemist, the Proleptic Chemist, the Medicinal Chemist, and the Philosopher. The proleptic chemist represents Aristotle's "four-element view", the medicinal chemist represents the "three-element view", and the philosopher remains neutral in the debate. Here the skeptical chemists fearlessly challenged the traditional doctrines of the historical authorities, refuting many old ideas and offering new insights in a lucid and forceful exposition. The book was widely circulated on the European continent.
Boyle attached great importance to experimental research. He believed that only experiment and observation are the basis of scientific thinking. He always clarified his views through rigorous and scientific experiments. In physics, he studied the color of light, the vacuum and the elasticity of air, summarizing Boyle's gas law; in chemistry, his research on acids, alkalis and indicators, and the exploration of methods of qualitative testing of salts, are quite effective. He was the first chemist to use the juices of various natural plants as indicators. Litmus test solution and litmus paper were invented by him. He was also the first chemist to give a clear definition of acids and bases and to classify substances into three categories: acids, bases and salts. He created a number of qualitative tests of salts, such as the use of copper salt solution is blue, add ammonia solution becomes dark blue (copper ions and sufficient amount of ammonia to form copper-ammonia complex ions) to test the copper salt; the use of hydrochloric acid and silver nitrate solution can be mixed to produce a white precipitate to test the silver salt and hydrochloric acid. These inventions of Boyle's have had such longevity that we still use these oldest methods today. Boyle also made many experiments in the determination of the composition and purity of substances, and in the study of similarities and differences in substances. He described a set of methods for identifying substances in his "Brief Review of the History of the Experimental Study of Mineral Waters," published in 1685, and became a pioneer in qualitative analysis.
In 1668, due to the death of his brother-in-law, he moved back to London to live with his sister and set up a laboratory in the backyard of his home to continue his experimental work. In his later years Boyle's work focused on the study of phosphorus. in 1670, Boyle suffered a stroke from exhaustion, after which his health waxed and waned, and when unable to carry out his research work in the laboratory he devoted himself to organizing the knowledge he had gained over the years from practice and reasoning. Whenever he felt a little lighter, he went to the laboratory to do his experiments or to write his papers, and took pleasure in doing so; in 1680 he was elected president of the Royal Society, but declined to accept the honor. Although he was born into the aristocracy, he was fascinated by working and living in scientific research, he never married, and spent his life engaged in the exploration of natural science. 1691, December 30, the scientist who laid the foundation of chemical science in the 17th century died in London. Engels had the highest praise for him, "Boyle established chemistry as a science."
Story #2:
Princeton Priestley - The Father of Gas Chemistry
Princeton Priestley was born in Leeds, England, on March 13, 1733, and grew up in a difficult home and was raised by relatives. in 175, he entered the seminary. After graduation he spent most of his time as a pastor, with chemistry as his hobby. He wrote extensively on chemistry, electricity, natural philosophy, and theology. He wrote many theological works that he thought he was proud of, yet it was his scientific works that made him famous. in 1764 when he was 31 years old he wrote his History of Electricity. It was a very famous book at the time, and as a result of its publication he was elected to the Royal Society in 1766.
In 1722, when he was 39, he wrote another History of Optics. It is also a masterpiece of the late 18th century. At that time, while serving as a minister in Leeds, he began to work on chemistry. His work on gases was quite productive. He used manufactured hydrogen to study the action of the gas on various metal oxides. In the same year Priestley also burned charcoal in a closed vessel and found that he could turn one-fifth of the air into carbonic acid gas, which, when absorbed with lime-water, left a gas that did not aid combustion or respiration. Since he was a believer in the doctrine of combustion, he called this remaining gas "air saturated with combustion". Apparently he made nitrogen by removing oxygen and carbonic acid gas from the air by burning charcoal and absorbing it with lye. In addition, he discovered nitrogen oxide (NO) and used it in the analysis of air. He also discovered or studied hydrogen chloride, ammonia, sulphurous acid gas (carbon dioxide), nitrogen oxide, oxygen, and many other gases. 1766 saw the publication of his three-volume book, Experiments and Observations on Several Gases. The book describes in detail the preparation or properties of various gases. Because of his outstanding achievements in the study of gases, he is known as the "father of gas chemistry".
The most important discovery in the study of gases was the discovery of oxygen. 1774, Priestley put mercury soot (mercuric oxide) in a glass dish and heated it with a spotting glass, and found that it quickly decomposed into gas. He thought it was air that was being released, so he used the gas collection method to collect the resulting gas and studied it, and found that the gas made the candle burn more vigorously, and breathing it was very relaxing and soothing. He made oxygen, and also proved experimentally that oxygen has the properties of aiding combustion and respiration. But because he was a stubborn believer in the theory of combustibles, still believe that air is a single gas, so he also called this gas "de-combustibles air", its properties and the previous discovery of "combustibles saturated air" (nitrogen) the difference only lies in the combustibles content is different, and thus the ability to fuel different. The difference between its properties and the previously discovered "air saturated with combustibles" (nitrogen) lies only in the different content of combustibles, and thus the different combustion-enhancing ability. In the same year he traveled to Europe, in Paris and Lavoisier exchanged a lot of chemical views, and the use of a spotlight mirror to make the mercury silver ash decomposition of the test to tell Lavoisier, so that Lavoisier benefited greatly. Lavoisier repeated Priestley's experiment on oxygen, and linked it with a large number of precise experimental materials to make a scientific analysis and judgment, revealing the real connection between combustion and air. However, until 1783, when Lavoisier's theory of combustion and oxidation was generally recognized as correct, Priestley still did not accept Lavoisier's explanation, and insisted on the erroneous theory of combustibles, and wrote a number of articles against Lavoisier's insights. This is an interesting fact in the history of chemistry. A man who discovered oxygen became, on the contrary, an opponent of the oxidation doctrine. Yet the discovery of oxygen by Priestley was an important factor in the subsequent flourishing of chemistry. That is why chemists of all countries still honor Priestley.
In 1791, he was persecuted for sympathizing with the French Revolution, and for making several propaganda speeches for the Revolution. His home was raided, and his books and experimental equipment were set on fire. He fled and hid in London, but London was not an easy place to live for long, and in 1794, at the age of sixty-one, he had to move to the United States, where he continued his scientific research. He continued his scientific research in the United States and died in 1804. People in Britain and the United States are very respectful of him, in the United Kingdom there is a full-body statue of him. In the United States, the house where he lived has been built as a memorial, and the Priestley Medal, named after him, has become the highest honor in American chemistry.
Story 3:
Madame Curie
Marie Curie (Madame Curie) was a French-Polish physicist and chemist.
In 1898 French physicist AntoineHenri Becquerel discovered that uranium-bearing minerals emitted a mysterious ray, but failed to reveal the mystery of this ray. Marie and her husband Pierrecurie*** undertook to study this ray. They isolated and analyzed pitchblende uranium ore under extremely difficult conditions, and finally discovered two new elements in July and December 1898, one after the other.
In honor of her native Poland, she named one element polonium and the other radium, meaning "radioactive substance. In order to produce pure radium compounds, Mrs. Curie and lasted four (MarieCuI7e, 1867--1934) loads, from tons of asphalt uranium ore in the slag refining 1O0 mg of radium chloride, and preliminary measurements of radium's relative atomic mass of 225. this simple number of cohesion of Mr. and Mrs. Curie's hard work and sweat.
In June 1903, Madame Curie received her doctorate in physics from the University of Paris with her dissertation on the study of radioactive substances. In November of the same year, Mr. and Mrs. Curie were awarded the David Gold Medal by the Royal Society, and in December, they were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Becquerel***.
In 1906, Pierre Curie died in a car accident. This heavy blow did not make her give up the obsessive pursuit, she endured the grief to redouble their efforts to complete their beloved scientific career. She continued her husband's lectures at the University of Paris, where she became the first woman professor, and in 1910 she published her famous book On Radioactivity. In the same year, she collaborated with others to analyze the pure metal radium and to measure its properties. She also determined the half-life of oxygen and other elements, and published a series of important papers on radioactivity. In view of these major achievements, she forked the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, becoming the first great scientist in history to win the Nobel Prize twice.
The founder of the science of radioactivity, who tasted the pain of science, because of years of hard work, suffering from pernicious anemia (leukemia) on July 4, 1934, unfortunately passed away, her scientific cause for mankind, and sacrificed a glorious life.