约翰·沃尔夫冈·德贝莱纳1780—1849

生平与工作

作为一个车夫的儿子，德贝赖纳可以接受正规教育的机会很少，因此他去给一位药剂师当学徒，同时广泛阅读，并参加过一些科学讲座。1810年，他成为了耶拿大学的一名教授。

1829年，在德贝赖纳工作生涯之初，他发现在选出的三元素群组(triad)中某些属性有一定的趋势。例如，锂和钾的原子量的平均数与钠的原子量非常接近。同样的事情也发生在钙，锶，钡、硫，硒，碲，以及氯，溴，碘之间。越来越多的triads被发现具有这样的性质，这些triads后来被称作“Döbereiner's triads”。

德贝赖纳也因发现了糠醛，以及他对于铂在催化剂用途方面的研究（如在他的发明Döbereiner's lamp中作为点火催化剂）而闻名。

德国诗人歌德是德贝赖纳的朋友，他每周都会参加德贝赖纳的讲座，并以德贝赖纳的化学亲和力的理论为其小说《亲和力》的基础。

Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (13 December 1780 – 24 March 1849) was a German chemist who is known best for work that was suggestive of the periodic law for the chemical elements, and for inventing the first lighter, which was known as the Döbereiner's lamp. He became a professor of chemistry and pharmacy for the University of Jena.

Life and work

As a coachman's son, Döbereiner had little opportunity for formal schooling. Thus, he was apprenticed to an apothecary, and began to read widely and to attend science lectures. He eventually became a professor for the University of Jena in 1810 and also studied chemistry at Strasbourg. In work published during 1829, Döbereiner reported trends in certain properties of selected groups of elements. For example, the average of the atomic masses of lithium and potassium was close to the atomic mass of sodium. A similar pattern was found with calcium, strontium, and barium; with sulfur, selenium, tellurium; and with chlorine, bromine, and iodine. Moreover, the densities for some of these triads had a similar pattern. These sets of elements became known as "Döbereiner's triads".

Döbereiner is also known for his discovery of furfural, for his work concerning the use of platinum as a catalyst, and for the invention of a lighter, known as Döbereiner's lamp. By 1828 hundreds of thousands of these lighters had been mass produced by the German manufacturer Gottfried Piegler in Schleiz.

The German writer Goethe was a friend of Döbereiner, attended his lectures weekly, and used his theories of chemical affinities as a basis for his famous 1809 novella Elective Affinities.