Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) - Swedish German chemist

Carl Wilhelm Scheele was born in Stralsund in Pomerania which was German-speaking even though it was a part of Sweden. His parentage was German, and throughout his life he used this language to write down his laboratory notes.

Wilhelm left school aged fourteen and he moved to Goteborg to replace his brother Johann Martin, who had been· a pharmacist apprentice and who had died at the age of twenty. There he developed an interest in chemistry and apparently carried out experiments late in the night using the chemicals available in the pharmacy. He also read widely including the work of Georg Ernst Stahl (1659 –1734), who was one of the main proponents of the phlogiston theory.

The apothecary was sold in 1765. He then went to work with an apothecary called Kjellström who also had scientific interests at the Spread-Eagle Apothecary in Malmö. There Scheele also made contact with Anders Retzius, who was a prominent chemist at Lund University.

A little later Scheele went to Stockholm to work in another Pharmacy. In 1770 he moved to Uppsala, where he worked in the pharmacy for Christian Ludwig Lokk, who provided him with a workbench and allowed him one day a week for research.

From the start he studied the materials that were available at apothecaries. This would form the foundation for his future work in organic chemistry and mineralogy. Over the years he developed a significant ability to experiment with organic substances without spoiling the inherent materials.

Living only for 44 years, this Swedish pharmacist discovered more elements (seven) than any other scientist -all before the era of modem chemistry of Lavoisier's Traite.

Scheele’s work in chemical mineral analysis led to a number of discoveries, including several metal acids and metals such as molybdenum, manganese and tungsten.

Scheele also discovered a score of fundamental organic compounds and gases including tartaric acid, lactic acid, oxalic acid, citric acid, malic acid, uric acid, casein, glycerol, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen fluoride, and hydrogen cyanide. Scheele also has an important place in the history of the discovery of respiratory gases because he was undoubtedly the first person to prepare oxygen and describe some of its properties.

Scheele produced oxygen by heating a variety of substances including mercuric oxide, as did Priestley. Scheele also obtained the gas by heating potassium nitrate, silver carbonate, manganese nitrate, and manganese oxide.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) - Swedish German chemist

Jöns Jacob Berzelius

Jöns Jacob Berzelius was born on August 20, 1779, in Väversunda, Sweden. His father, Samuel, a provincial schoolmaster and died when Jöns Jacob was four years old. His mother, Elizabeth Dorothea, remarried to Anders Ekmarck, a pastor and died shortly afterward.

In the autumn of 1796, after finishing four years of secondary school, he went to Uppsala to begin medical studies. He began his medical studies at the age of seventeen but was forced to withdraw when his scholarship was withdrawn, not, however, before learning much chemistry from Anders Gustav Ekeberg (1767 -1813), the discoverer of tantalum.

At an early age Berzelius had been impressed with the chemistry of Jeremias Benjamin Richter (1762-1807), who discovered the Law of Neutrality and coined the term stoichiometry, and Joseph Louis Proust (1754- 1826), who discovered the Law of Constant Proportions.

In May 1802 he presented his doctor’s thesis where he reported on his experiments in the medical use of galvanic current for curing all kinds of complaints from swollen knees to St. Vitus’s dance. In his list of treated cases Berzelius was able to cite only one positive result: a certain improvement in the locomotive faculty of a man suffering from numb fingers, but the thesis, a mere fourteen pages, was nevertheless a pioneer work in a new field of medical Science.

After graduation, he became an assistant to the professor of surgery at Stockholm. Although he preferred chemistry to medicine economic reasons forced him to serve as regional physician near Stockholm.

Berzelius was one of the most prominent chemists of the 19th century; his scientific contributions were fundamental to the understanding of chemistry and the setting of standards for experimental work.

In 1803 Berzelius and Hisinger, independent of each other, succeeded in isolating a new element which they named cerium after the recently-discovered asteroid Ceres.

Berzelius also discovered the elements, selenium, and thorium, and was the first to isolate silicon, calcium, barium, strontium, tantalum, and zirconium in pure form.

In 1807, Berzelius became Professor of Medicine and Pharmacy at Stockholm’s School of Surgery (where he had previously worked as an unpaid assistant). He gave up this post after being elected secretary of Kungliga Svenska Vetenskapsakademien (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences).

In 1807 Berzelius and six other physicians founded the Swedish Medical Society, and in 1812 he was appointed permanent secretary of the recently created Academy of Agriculture, a position he retained for the rest of his life. He died in 1848, four decades after being elected to Sweden’s Royal Academy of Science in the eventful year of 1808.
Jöns Jacob Berzelius