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Introduction

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Abstract

This introductory chapter presents an overview of the history of the gaseous hydrocarbons, including that of acetylene, which is the focus of the current volume. The isolation, synthesis, and applications of these species is presented, along with an introduction to the polymerization of unsaturated hydrocarbons.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Johannes Baptista Van Helmont was born in Brussels in 1579 [1,2,3] and is considered by some as the most prominent chemist of the first half of the 17th century [3, 4], although his contributions to medicine are more significant than those of chemistry. Even though his name is given as Johannes in the frontispiece shown in Fig. 1.1, it has also been reported by various authors as Johann [3, 4], Joan [5, 6], Jean, and Jan. To avoid this confusion, some authors only give his initial. Coming from a noble family, Van Helmont studied at the University of Louvain until 1594 [2,3,4]. Although educated in the conventional classical courses, he took no degree as he considered academic honors a mere vanity [2, 3]. His interests then led him to the medical profession, and he took a M.D. at Louvain in either 1599 [2, 4] or 1609 [3]. He died on December 30, 1644, either in Brussels or Vilvorde [3].

  2. 2.

    Stephen Hales was born September 7, 1677 [7, 8], at Bekesbourne in Kent, the sixth son of Thomas and Mary Hales [7]. He entered Bennet College, Cambridge, in 1696, at the age of nineteen [7, 8]. In ca. 1702, he took a Bachelor of Arts degree [7]. He was then ordained a deacon, elected a fellow, and granted a Master of Arts degree in 1703 [7, 8]. He continued studies until 1708–1709 [7]. In ca. 1710, he was made perpetual curate of Teddington in Middlesex [7, 9] and became a Bachelor of Divinity in 1711 [7]. He later took the Doctor of Divinity at the University of Oxford [8] and refused a canonry of Winsor so that he could devote himself to his experimental pursuits [9]. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1718 [8] and was awarded the Copley Medal in 1739 [7, 8]. He died January 4, 1761, after a short illness [7].

  3. 3.

    August Wilhelm Hofmann was born on April 8, 1818 in Giessen. He began studying philosophy and law in University of Giessen in 1836 [11, 12]. His course of study also included the fundamentals of chemistry, which exposed him to the laboratory of Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) [12]. Hofmann eventually turned to chemistry and was awarded his Ph.D. in 1841. By 1843, Hofmann had become Liebig’s assistant [11, 12]. He then became a Privatdozent in Bonn in the spring of 1845 [12]. Shortly thereafter, though, Hofmann was offered the directorship of the Royal College of Chemistry in London. To facilitate the offer, he was appointed assistant professor at Bonn and granted a leave of absence [12]. Thus, he moved to England in 1845 with the plan to return to Bonn after two years. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851 [11]. He ultimately returned to Germany in 1865 to succeed Eilhard Mitscherlich (1794–1863) at Berlin. It was after this return that he also become von Hofmann [11].

  4. 4.

    In Hofmann’s original nomenclature, the modern butane was given the name quartane [13].

  5. 5.

    Alessandro Volta was born in Camnago on February 18, 1745 [17]. He began his career as a teacher of physics in the gymnasium at Como in 1774 [18]. He then became professor of physics at the University of Pavia in 1779 [17, 18], where he began his electrical research for which he is so well known. He was then elected Rector at Pavia in 1785 [17]. From 1791, he worked entirely on galvanism, with his voltaic pile (the modern battery) reported in 1800. In 1801, he was summoned to Paris by Napoleon and was presented with a gold medal for his work. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1791 and an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1802. He retired from his professorship at Pavia in 1803, but became Director of the Philosophical Faculty at Padua in 1815. In 1819, he retired from all offices [18] and returned to Como, where he died on March 5,1827 [17].

  6. 6.

    John Dalton was born September 5, 1766 in a tiny hamlet of Eaglesfield [20], the son of a poor weaver and farmer [21]. He was informally educated until age 12 [20, 21], after which he opened a village school and began teaching himself [20]. In 1781, Dalton and his brother moved to Kendal to teach at their cousin’s Quaker school. The brothers took over the school in 1785 [20]. In 1793, he become a professor of natural philosophy at New College in Manchester [20, 21]. Dalton resigned from New College in 1800, after which he supported himself by private teaching and occasional lecturing [20]. He was elected a corresponding member of the Academie des Sciences in 1816 and raised to a Foreign Associate in 1830. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822 and he became the first recipient of the Royal Medal in 1826. He died on July 27, 1844 [20].

  7. 7.

    Many atomic weights were not yet formalized in 1810, including carbon. Dalton came to the formula CH2, rather than CH4, because he used the value of 5.4 for the atomic weight of carbon [22].

  8. 8.

    Michael Faraday was born September 22, 1791 in Newington in Surrey [25]. His father suffered from ill-health and the family was thus fairly poor. Faraday was apprenticed to a local bookseller and bookbinder at age 14 [25]. After attending lectures of Humphry Davy in 1812, he persuaded Davy to take him on as an assistant [25] and entered the Royal Institution in 1813, at age 21, as Humphry Davy’s laboratory assistant [26]. After a leave of absence to accompany Davy and his wife on a continental tour, he returned as assistant to William Brande, Davy’s successor as professor of chemistry. In 1821 Faraday was appointed Superintendent of the House and Laboratory in 1821 and he became Director of the Laboratory in 1825 [25, 26]. He was finally appointed Fullerian professor of chemistry in 1834, at age 42 [26]. He died August 25, 1867 [25].

  9. 9.

    The original meaning of the term radical was very different than the modern definition and was not defined by an unpaired electron. In its use in the 19th century, a radical referred to the root base of a series of compounds (such as a methyl or ethyl radical) that could be isolated as a discrete compound.

  10. 10.

    Edward Frankland was initially apprenticed to a pharmacist in Lancaster, but it was a doctor that befriended him who taught him Dalton’s atomic theory, gave him facilities for laboratory work, and advised him to study with Lyon Playfar (1818–1898) at the College of Engineers in Putney [28]. He became Playfar’s chief assistant in 1847 and it was there that he met Kolbe. That same year the two worked for some time in Robert Bunsen’s laboratory in Marburg, after which Frankland returned to Marburg the next year and spent time with Justus von Liebig in Giessen in 1849. Frankland succeeded Playfar at Putney and then became professor of chemistry at Owens College, Manchester in 1851. He then became professor at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1857, the Royal Institution in 1863, and finally Hofmann’s successor at the Royal School of Mines in 1865 [28, 29]. He resigned his professorship in 1885 [28].

  11. 11.

    Hermann Kolbe was the oldest of 15 children, the son of a Lutheran pastor [30]. He studied under Friedrich Wöhler (1800–1882) in 1838, was assistant to Bunsen in 1842, and Playfair in 1845. In 1847, he returned to Marburg and succeeded Bunsen as professor there in 1851. He moved to Leipzig in 1865 where he had a lab built for 132 students. Besides being a talented experimenter, Kolbe had a reputation as a very successful teacher [30].

  12. 12.

    Jan Ingen-Housz was born in Breda, Netherlands, on December 8, 1730 [40, 41]. He was educated at the Breda Latin School until age 16. He then began studying at the University of Louvain, where he received the MD degree in 1753 at the age of 22 [40, 41]. Afterwards, he continued studies for several years at the universities of Leiden, Paris and Edinburgh [40, 41], before returning to Breda in 1756 to begin practicing medicine [41]. In 1765, he moved to London where he learned the technique of inoculation against smallpox, using the live virus. He traveled to Vienna in 1768 to inoculate the Royal Family [40, 41]. His success led to an appointment as the Court Counsellor and Personal Physician to the Imperial Family [41]. Ingen-Housz is also credited with the discovery of photosynthesis [40]. Ingen-Housz died on September 7, 1799 [40, 41].

  13. 13.

    The modern density value for ethylene is 1.178 × 10−3 g/mL, while the density of air is 1.2041 × 10−3 g/mL at 20 °C. Thus, using air as a standard, this would give a specific gravity of 0.978 for ethylene, in reasonable agreement with the value of the Dutch chemists. However, this is not in agreement with the observation by Ingen-Housz that the gas he observed was heavier than air.

  14. 14.

    Little is known about Reynolds other than the fact that he was a student of Hofmann [48].

  15. 15.

    Hermann Staudinger was born in Worms, Germany on March 23, 1881 [51]. He studied at Darmstadt, Munich, and Halle. After taking his doctorate in 1903, he worked under Johnannes Thiele (1865–1918) at Strasbourg until 1907 [51]. He was then made an associate professor at the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) before succeeding Richard Willstatter (1872–1942) as professor of organic chemistry at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) in 1912 [51, 52]. He then moved to the University of Freiburg in 1925 [51, 52]. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1953 “for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry.” He retired in 1951 and died September 8, 1965 [51].

  16. 16.

    Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848) was born in a small Swedish town in East Gothland. As both of his parents died when he was young, he was raised by his stepfather Anders Ekmarck. He finished school in 1796, after which he entered the University of Uppsala as a medical student. Due to lack of means, however, he was forced to leave and became a private tutor until he won a small scholarship in 1798. He then reentered the University and graduated with a dissertation on mineral water [56]. He completed his M.D. in 1802 with a thesis on the medical applications of galvanism and was appointed reader in chemistry at the Carlberg Military Academy in 1806. He was appointed professor of medicine and pharmacy the following year at the School of Surgery in Stockholm, where he had a modest laboratory [56]. He was elected a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1808 and became a joint secretary in 1818. He resigned his professorship in 1832, but continued to be active in chemical discussions until his death in 1848 [56].

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Rasmussen, S.C. (2018). Introduction. In: Acetylene and Its Polymers. SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95489-9_1

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