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The History (and Pre-history) of the Discovery and Chemistry of the Noble Gases

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150 Years of the Periodic Table

Part of the book series: Perspectives on the History of Chemistry ((PHC))

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Abstract

The existence of the then-so-called inert gases was discovered over a short period of time in the 1890s; the demonstration that they were in fact not inert took place during an even shorter period of time, in 1962. This paper surveys the key events, as well as some of the earlier work that led up to them, of those two crucial episodes in the history of chemistry.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The work of Professor Hoppe was not stimulated by the beautiful investigations of Barlett on XePtF6, because the plans for the preparation of xenon fluorides were much older and go back to 1949, as I can testify.

  2. 2.

    In a later work (J. Chem Education 41, 174, 1964) during the discussion of XeF2 the name Hoppe is not mentioned once.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Greg Girolami for calling my attention to the Klemm letter and providing his translation thereof; I also am indebted to a reviewer and the editors for valuable suggestions.

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  1. Beckman Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 91125, USA

    Jay A. Labinger

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  1. Jay A. Labinger
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Correspondence to Jay A. Labinger .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Carmen J. Giunta

  2. School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Vera V. Mainz

  3. School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Gregory S. Girolami

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Labinger, J.A. (2021). The History (and Pre-history) of the Discovery and Chemistry of the Noble Gases. In: Giunta, C.J., Mainz, V.V., Girolami, G.S. (eds) 150 Years of the Periodic Table. Perspectives on the History of Chemistry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67910-1_12

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