Abstract
What is catalysis? For over a century processes have been known in which a chemical is able to transform another without itself being changed in its constitution or amount. In 1811 Kirchhoff (Kirchhoff, G. S. C. Ostwald refers to: Kirchhoff (1811), Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences de St. Pétersbourg 4:27.) had shown by careful measurement that starch could be converted into sugar by boiling it in dilute sulphuric acid. The conversion requires the acid, but at the end of the reaction all of the acid is still there. In 1836 Berzelius with his extraordinary capacity to conceptually unite a wide range of phenomena, had referred to this as catalysis though he considered the time not yet ripe to explore the phenomenon and did not try to provide a mechanistic explanation for it.
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Notes
- 1.
Kirchhoff, G.S.C. Ostwald refers to: Kirchhoff (1811), Mémoires de l'Académie impériale des sciences de St. Pétersbourg 4:27.
- 2.
Ostwald W (1883) J Prakt Chem 28:449‒495.
- 3.
Ostwald W. (1984) J Prakt Chem 385–408, and Ostwald W. (1985) J Prakt Chem 31:307‒317.
- 4.
Ostwald W (1888) Z Physic Chem 2:124‒147.
- 5.
Ostwald W (1890) Ber Verh Kgl Sächs Ges Wiss, Math Phys Cl 42:189‒191.
- 6.
Ostwald W (1894) Z Phys Chem (Leipzig) 15:705‒706.
- 7.
Wilhelm Kirchner.
- 8.
Arbeiten des physikalisch-chemischen Instituts der Universität Leipzig aus den Jahren 1887 bis 1896. W. Ostwald (editor). Volume 1–4. Engelmann, Leipzig 1897.
- 9.
The relief is still in “Haus Energie” in Großbothen.
- 10.
Correct is C. Linde.
- 11.
In his book entitled “Lehre von der Verwandtschaft der Körper” Gerlach, Dresden 1777, Wenzel wrote: “The strength of chemical affinity is proportional to the reacting masses”. This was an anticipation of the Law of Mass Action. At that time no clear distinction between thermodynamic affinity and reaction rates (kinetics) had been made. In modern understanding affinity is the negative partial derivative of Gibbs free energy with respect to the extent of reaction (reaction coordinate) at constant temperature and pressure, i.e., a purely thermodynamic quantity. Only in 1954 did I. Prigogine and R. Defay define affinity as the derivative of the rate of change of the uncompensated (irreversible) heat of a reaction over the extent of reaction, thus giving the term a clearly kinetic aspect.
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Jack, R.S., Scholz, F. (2017). Catalysis and the New Institute. In: Jack, R., Scholz, F. (eds) Wilhelm Ostwald. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46955-3_24
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