Jöns Jacob Berzelius
(Väfversunda, Sweden, 1779-Stockholm, 1848) Swedish chemist.Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by relatives who already noted in his school days his interest in science, especially in medicine, a discipline in which he graduated in 1802 from the University of Uppsala.His chemistry professor, J.Afzelius, had a notable influence on him and aroused his interest in chemical readings and experiments.
Berzelius
In 1806 he joined the faculty of the Karlberg War Academy as a professor of chemistry.In 1807 he took over the chair of medicine and pharmacology in Stockholm, whose budget was increased by the great need that the state had for military surgeons destined for the front in its confrontations with France (1805-1809 and 1812-1814) , which gave him some freedom to develop his research.In 1808 he became a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, of which he was elected perpetual secretary in 1818.
In Berzelius's time, John Dalton and other chemists had begun to use a series of symbols to represent the atoms of the elements: oxygen, for example, was indicated by a small circle, which in hydrogen had a point in the center, and in nitrogen a vertical line.However, the discovery of so many new elements would have led, if they persisted in using the aforementioned system, to great confusion.Berzelius solved the problem by proposing that the elements be represented with the initial or the first two letters of their Latin name; Chemistry owes much of its extensive development to this rational symbology.
The extensive work of the famous scientist tended mainly to determine the atomic weight of the elements and the exact proportions according to which they are combined, that is, the formulas of the compounds.His ability as an analyzer, which led him to be considered the founder of chemical analysis, allowed him to make great strides in this regard.However, such work was difficult for him, since the criteria about the combination of the elements were necessarily arbitrary and often erroneous; Dalton, for example, despite having obtained almost exactly the proportions of weight of the components of water, imagined the water molecule made up of a hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom.Berzelius carried out numerous analyzes, but his attempt was not to be realized until the middle of the 19th century, with the work of Cannizzaro.
The texts that mark the path followed by Berzelius in this regard are Essay on the proportions determined according to which the elements of inorganic nature are found (1810) and Essay on the theory of chemical proportions and the chemical influence of electricity (1819).However, the work that summarizes the activity of Berzelius, written in parallel to the development of this, is Treatise of chemistry (1808-18), translated into several languages, and that more than a treatise is the text containing the author's conception of chemical science.
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