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1993/01/01 Azkune Mendia, Iñaki - Elhuyar Fundazioa Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Biografiak

On 19 February 1859 he first saw the light of this world in the Swedish town of Wijk, next to the Uppsala. He learned to read at age three without anyone teaching him and stood out from childhood at school.

He studied at the University of Uppsala how electricity leaked into dissolutions. Faraday published the laws of electrolysis that considered electricity to have small particles. The ions were mentioned, but no one properly explained the nature of the ions.

Arrhenius considered that substances that led electric current dissolved in water, such as sodium chloride or salt, were electrolytes and did not conduct currents. Also, among those who were electrolytes and those who were not, there was the problem of the solidification point of the water. The dissolution of a substance in water reduces the solidification temperature of the water depending on the amount dissolved. The more substances dissolve, the lower the solidification temperature.

But for some substances the temperature decrease was inversely proportional to the molecular weight. In a liter of water dissolves a gram of sucrose or a gram of glucose, in the case of sucrose half the temperature drop. Since the size of the glucose molecule was half that of sucrose, in a gram of glucose there were twice as many molecules as in a gram of sucrose.

Was that solidification temperature reduction behavior the same as with electrolytes? In a certain amount of sodium chloride there was a fixed number of molecules and the reduction in solidification temperature was calculated, but they recorded twice the drop in temperature. Arrhenius then explained that each sodium chloride molecule entering the water is divided into two particles (one sodium and one chlorosa). Positively charged sodium ion and negatively charged chlorine ion present different characteristics to uncharged atoms.

This vision was revolutionary at that time because they considered electrically charged atoms impossible. Therefore, Arrhenius' theory was considered by very few when published in his doctoral thesis in 1884. The jury also awarded the lowest note to the thesis because they did not believe in it. Fortunately Van’t Hoff and Ostwald, concerned about the new theory, worked alongside Arrhenius.

In 1889 Arrhenius made a new contribution to Physical Chemistry. He studied how the amount of reaction increases depending on the temperature. He suggested that molecules needed activation energy to react.

When in 1890 Thomson discovered the electron and Becquerel radioactivity, the ionic theories of Arrhenius were accepted. In 1895 he was appointed professor at the University of Stockholm and in 1903 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his doctoral thesis of so little success.

In 1905 he was appointed director of Physical Chemistry at the Nobel Institute, a position that lasted almost until his death.

Arrhenius then took care of the mysteries of science. In his book Worlds in the Making, published in 1908, he claimed that life on Earth arose when spores came alive in space. He reported that spores easily endured cold and lack of air and that from the star to the star were driven by radiation pressure through space. So it seemed to him that there could be life on Mars, but later discoveries have shown otherwise.

In 1912 he published the book Theories of Solutions.

He died in the Swedish capital of Stockholm on 2 October 1927.