Svante Arrhenius Chemist Date of Birth: 19.02.1859 Country: Sweden

1. Early Life and Education
2. University Studies
3. Theory of Electrolytic Dissociation
4. Recognition and Research
5. Professorship and Nobel Prize
6. Other Research and Contributions
7. Later Life and Legacy

Early Life and Education

Svante August Arrhenius, a prominent Swedish physical chemist, was born on February 19, 1859, at the estate of Vik, near Uppsala. He was the second son of Karolina Kristina (Thunberg) and Svante Gustaf Arrhenius, the estate's manager. Arrhenius' ancestors had been farmers.

One year after his son's birth, the family moved to Uppsala, where Svante Gustaf Arrhenius became a member of the Uppsala University Board of Inspectors. As a young child, Arrhenius showed a keen interest in numbers, often adding up the figures in his father's reports. While attending Uppsala Cathedral School, he excelled in biology, physics, and mathematics.

University Studies

In 1876, Arrhenius enrolled at Uppsala University, where he pursued studies in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1878 but continued his physics studies at Uppsala for three more years. In 1881, he traveled to Stockholm to join the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and research electricity under Erik Edlund.

Theory of Electrolytic Dissociation

At that time, the physical nature of electricity was still poorly understood. It was known, however, that while pure water and dry salts cannot conduct electricity, their aqueous solutions can. Arrhenius investigated the electrical conductivity of various solutions. He theorized that when certain substances dissolve in liquids, their molecules dissociate or break apart into two or more particles, which he labeled ions.

Each whole molecule was electrically neutral, but its particles carried small electrical charges—positive or negative, depending on the particle's nature. For example, sodium chloride (salt) molecules dissociate in water to form positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chlorine ions. These charged particles, the active components of a molecule, exist only in solution and enable electrical current to flow. The electrical current, in turn, drives these active components towards oppositely charged electrodes.

Arrhenius' hypothesis formed the basis of his doctoral dissertation, which he submitted to Uppsala University in 1884. However, many scientists at the time questioned the coexistence of oppositely charged particles in solution, and the faculty committee graded his dissertation as a fourth-class result—too low for him to attain a teaching license.

Recognition and Research

Undeterred, Arrhenius not only published his findings but also distributed copies of his thesis to leading European scientists, including the renowned German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. Ostwald was so intrigued by the work that he visited Arrhenius in Uppsala and invited him to work in his laboratory at the Riga Polytechnic Institute. Arrhenius declined the offer, but Ostwald's endorsement helped secure Arrhenius' appointment as a lecturer at Uppsala University, a position he held for two years.

In 1886, Arrhenius became a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences scholar, allowing him to travel and conduct research abroad. Over the next five years, he worked in Riga with Ostwald, in Würzburg with Friedrich Kohlrausch (where he met Walter Nernst), at the University of Graz with Ludwig Boltzmann, and at the University of Amsterdam with Jacobus Van't Hoff.

Professorship and Nobel Prize

Upon his return to Stockholm in 1891, Arrhenius became a physics lecturer at Stockholm University and was appointed a full professor there in 1895. In 1897, he was elected Rector of the university.

Throughout this time, Arrhenius continued developing his theory of electrolytic dissociation and also studied osmotic pressure. (Osmotic pressure measures the tendency for two different solutions on either side of a membrane to equalize their concentrations.) Van't Hoff had expressed osmotic pressure as PV = iRT, where P denotes the osmotic pressure of a substance dissolved in a liquid; V is volume; R is the gas pressure of any gas present; T is temperature; and i is a factor that often equals 1 for gases but is greater than 1 for solutions containing salts. Van't Hoff could not explain why i varied, but Arrhenius' work helped show that this factor could be linked to the number of ions in solution.

In 1903, Arrhenius was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of the extraordinary services rendered by his electrolytic dissociation theory to the advancement of chemistry." Speaking on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, H.R. Ternblad emphasized that Arrhenius' theory of ions provided a qualitative basis for electrochemistry, "making it possible for mathematical treatment to be applied to it." "One of the most important consequences of Arrhenius' theory," Ternblad said, "is that it completes the great generalization for which the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Van't Hoff."

Other Research and Contributions

A scientist with wide-ranging interests, Arrhenius conducted research in many areas of physics. He published a paper on ball lightning (1883), studied the effect of solar radiation on the atmosphere, searched for explanations of climatic changes such as ice ages, and attempted to apply physicochemical theories to the study of volcanic activity.

In 1901, with several colleagues, he confirmed James Clerk Maxwell's hypothesis that cosmic radiation exerts pressure on particles. Arrhenius pursued this further, attempting to explain the nature of the Earth's northern lights and the solar corona through this phenomenon. He also hypothesized that light pressure could transport spores and other living seeds through space. In 1902, Arrhenius began research in immunochemistry, a field that continued to interest him for many years.

Later Life and Legacy

After retiring from Stockholm University in 1905, Arrhenius was named the director of the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry in Stockholm, a position he held until his death. Arrhenius married twice, first to Sofia Rudbeck in 1894 (with whom he had a son) and again in 1905 to Maria Johansson (with whom he had a son and two daughters). On October 2, 1927, after a brief illness, Arrhenius died in Stockholm.

Arrhenius received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the Davy Medal of the Royal Society of London (1902), the first Willard Gibbs Medal of the American Chemical Society (1911), and the Faraday Medal of the British Chemical Society (1914). He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, and the German Chemical Society. Arrhenius held honorary degrees from several universities, including Birmingham, Edinburgh, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Oxford, and Cambridge.