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Early impact of quantum physics on chemistry: George Hevesy’s work on rare earth elements and Michael Polanyi’s absorption theory

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Abstract

After Heitler and London published their pioneering work on the application of quantum mechanics to chemistry in 1927, it became an almost unquestioned dogma that chemistry would soon disappear as a discipline of its own rights. Reductionism felt victorious in the hope of analytically describing the chemical bond and the structure of molecules. The old quantum theory has already produced a widely applied model for the structure of atoms and the explanation of the periodic system. This paper will show two examples of the entry of quantum physics into more classical fields of chemistry: inorganic chemistry and physical chemistry. Due to their professional networking, George Hevesy and Michael Polanyi found their ways to Niels Bohr and Fritz London, respectively, to cooperate in solving together some problems of classical chemistry. Their works on rare earth elements and adsorption theory throws light to the application of quantum physics outside the reductionist areas. They support the heuristic and persuasive value of quantum thinking in the 1920–1930s. Looking at Polanyi’s later oeuvre, his experience with adsorption theory could be a starting point of his non-justificationist philosophy.

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Notes

  1. Some recent biographies of Hevesy and Polanyi: Niesse (2005), Scott et al. (2005).

  2. A vast amount of literature discussed this problem. See, e.g., Melhado (1985).

  3. Mary Jo Nye analyzed the general features of disciplines, mainly chemistry, through their identities (Nye 1993).

  4. In the vast literature see, e.g. Fleming (1969).

  5. Luis Navarro shows that Einstein relied on statistical physics in the derivation of this law. This fact is significant because statistical mechanics proved to be particularly successful in the physical reduction of thermodynamics (Navarro 1991).

  6. Bohr’s classic papers were reprinted in Bohr 1963. On his later results see Bohr 1965. About the extension of Bohr's building-up theory to molecules, see Buhm Soon Park (2001).

  7. On the history of quantum chemistry see Nye (1993, pp. 227–261).

  8. Buhm Soon Park emphasized that quantum chemistry was gradually put on a technical, computational character with a diminishing physical relevance. He claimed that while searching for new approximation methods, quantum chemistry changed more into an instrument for producing values closer to experimental data than developing new conceptual approaches (Park 2007).

  9. Hevesy told this story many times, including his biographical notes that were published with insignificant corrections by Cockroft as an obituary of Hevesy (Cockroft 1967). The original publication was Coster and Hevesy 1923, and Hevesy published a monograph on the new element: Hevesy 1927.

  10. About the controversy, see Kragh 1980.

  11. About Polanyi’s times in Berlin see Nye (2007).

  12. The chemists' favorable reaction was reported in an interview with Hermann Mark. Scott et al. (2005), p. 74.

  13. Langmuir's fundamental paper: Langmuir (1918). A wider view: (Langmuir 1932).

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  1. Institute for Research Organization, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Nador utca 18, 1051, Budapest, Hungary

    Gabor Pallo

  2. POB. 994, 1245, Budapest, Hungary

    Gabor Pallo

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Pallo, G. Early impact of quantum physics on chemistry: George Hevesy’s work on rare earth elements and Michael Polanyi’s absorption theory. Found Chem 13, 51–61 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-011-9105-1

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