kb/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_revolution-2.md

title	chunk	source	category	tags	date_saved	instance
Chemical revolution	3/3	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_revolution	reference	science, encyclopedia	2026-05-05T16:14:18.347232+00:00	kb-cron

== John Dalton == John Dalton was an English chemist who developed the idea of atomic theory of chemical elements. Dalton's atomic theory of chemical elements assumed that each element had unique atoms associated with and specific to that atom. This was in opposition to Lavoisier's definition of elements which was that elements are substances that chemists could not break down further into simpler parts. Dalton's idea also differed from the idea of corpuscular theory of matter, which believed that all atoms were the same, and had been a supported theory since the 17th century.
To help support his idea, Dalton worked on defining the relative weights of atoms in chemicals in his work New System of Chemical Philosophy, published in 1808. His text showed calculations to determine the relative atomic weights of Lavoisier's different elements based on experimental data pertaining to the relative amounts of different elements in chemical combinations. Dalton argued that elements would combine in the simplest form possible. Water was known to be a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, thus Dalton believed water to be a binary compound containing one hydrogen and one oxygen. Dalton was able to accurately compute the relative quantity of gases in atmospheric air. He used the specific gravity of azotic (nitrogen), oxygenous, carbonic acid (carbon dioxide), and hydrogenous gases as well as aqueous vapor determined by Lavoisier and Davy to determine the proportional weights of each as a percent of a whole volume of atmospheric air. Dalton determined that atmospheric air contains 75.55% azotic gas, 23.32% oxygenous gas, 1.03% aqueous vapor, and 0.10% carbonic acid gas.

== Jöns Jacob Berzelius == Jöns Jacob Berzelius was a Swedish chemist who studied medicine at the University of Uppsala and was a professor of chemistry in Stockholm. He drew on the ideas of both Davy and Dalton to create an electrochemical view of how elements combined together. Berzelius classified elements into two groups, electronegative and electropositive depending which pole of a galvanic battery they were released from when decomposed. He created a scale of charge with oxygen being the most electronegative element and potassium the most electropositive. This scale signified that some elements had positive and negative charges associated with them and the position of an element on this scale and the element's charge determined how that element combined with others.
Berzelius's work on electrochemical atomic theory was published in 1818 as Essai sur la théorie des proportions chimiques et sur l'influence chimique de l'électricité. He also introduced a new chemical nomenclature into chemistry by representing elements with letters and abbreviations, such as O for oxygen and Fe for iron. Combinations of elements were represented as sequences of these symbols and the number of atoms were represented at first by superscripts and then later subscripts.

== References ==

== Further reading == William B. Jensen, "Logic, History, and the Chemistry Textbook: III. One Chemical Revolution or Three?", Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 75, No. 8, August 1998 John G. McEvoy (2010). Historiography of the Chemical Revolution: Patterns of Interpretation in the History of Science. Pickering & Chatto. ISBN 978-1-84893-030-8. See also book review by Seymour Mauskopf in HYLE--International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 17, No.1 (2011), pp. 41–46. Priestley, Joseph (1797). Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston, and the Decomposition of Water. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Printed by Thomas Dobson. Retrieved 2026-04-07.

== External links == Chemistry :: The chemical revolution – Encyclopædia Britannica A bibliography on the chemical revolution Archived 2008-04-22 at the Wayback Machine – University of Valencia