Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner was a German chemist who was born on December 18, 1780 in Hof an Der Saale, Germany. He was a remarkable man who will always be remembered for his fundamental contributions starting with being deemed 'founder of the study of catalysis'. Dobereiner, the son of a coachman and servant, had little funds to assist in his educational journey. This by no means stopped him from pursuing his dreams. By the time he was 15 he successfully managed to get an apprenticeship at an apothecary named Lotz in Munchenberg. Although still unable to fund a college education, when Dobereiner was 17 he charged ahead and devoted his full attention to participate in lectures on chemistry, botany, and mineralogy, which he studied on his own.
By 1802, Dobereiner managed to open an agricultural produce business along with a small chemical factory in the quaint town of Gefree near Bayreuth. He quickly began to produce pharmaceutical-chemical preparations which swiftly lead to the publications of his experiments in the Neues allgemeines Journal der Chemie. In 1810, Dobereiner became professor of chemistry at Jena and maintained that position for 39 years. Some of his most popular publications include; Essays on Physical Chemistry and Principles of General Chemistry. Then in 1817, perhaps a moment that will never be forgotten unveiled when Dobereiner concluded through his observation, that in certain groups of three elements the atomic weight of the middle element was approximately the mean of that of the first and third. This new classification was called “Dobereiner’s triads”, a concept that was a prototype to the 1869 periodic table made by Dmitri Mendeleyev.
Dobereiner dedicated much of his life to his passion for work, however, felt compelled to marry a woman by the name of Clara Knab. It was on a fateful day in 1810, that instant sparks flew when he meet Joann Goethe, a German Polymath and the founder of human chemistry. Goethe had come to take Dobereiner’s weekly lectures about chemical analysis. Seeing the sheer brilliance of Dobereiner, Goethe did everything in his power to obtain a full time professorship at Jena for Dobereiner where he remained from late 1810 until March 1849. From that moment forward, the inseparable pair collaborated on all of their future work. Their friendship was one built on kindness, support, and trust which left a legacy that one could only dream to find within a lifetime. Dobereiner died on March 24, 1849 in Jena. As a symbolism of the two men’s closeness, Dobereiner’s tombstone was inscribed “Goethe’s advisor, creator of the rule of triads, discovery of platinum catalysis.”
By 1802, Dobereiner managed to open an agricultural produce business along with a small chemical factory in the quaint town of Gefree near Bayreuth. He quickly began to produce pharmaceutical-chemical preparations which swiftly lead to the publications of his experiments in the Neues allgemeines Journal der Chemie. In 1810, Dobereiner became professor of chemistry at Jena and maintained that position for 39 years. Some of his most popular publications include; Essays on Physical Chemistry and Principles of General Chemistry. Then in 1817, perhaps a moment that will never be forgotten unveiled when Dobereiner concluded through his observation, that in certain groups of three elements the atomic weight of the middle element was approximately the mean of that of the first and third. This new classification was called “Dobereiner’s triads”, a concept that was a prototype to the 1869 periodic table made by Dmitri Mendeleyev.
Dobereiner dedicated much of his life to his passion for work, however, felt compelled to marry a woman by the name of Clara Knab. It was on a fateful day in 1810, that instant sparks flew when he meet Joann Goethe, a German Polymath and the founder of human chemistry. Goethe had come to take Dobereiner’s weekly lectures about chemical analysis. Seeing the sheer brilliance of Dobereiner, Goethe did everything in his power to obtain a full time professorship at Jena for Dobereiner where he remained from late 1810 until March 1849. From that moment forward, the inseparable pair collaborated on all of their future work. Their friendship was one built on kindness, support, and trust which left a legacy that one could only dream to find within a lifetime. Dobereiner died on March 24, 1849 in Jena. As a symbolism of the two men’s closeness, Dobereiner’s tombstone was inscribed “Goethe’s advisor, creator of the rule of triads, discovery of platinum catalysis.”
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