Friedrich he was the second son of Gottfried Ostwald, a master cooper, and Elisabeth Leuckel, both descendants of German immigrants. After his early studies in Riga, he enrolled in 1872 at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu, Est.), Where he studied chemistry under Carl Schmidt and received a candidate’s degree (1875), a master’s degree (1876), and a doctorate. (1878).
In 1880, he married Helene von Reyher. They had two daughters and three sons, one of them, Wolfgang Ostwald; became a famous colloid chemist. After moving to Leipzi in 1888, the Ostwalds became German citizens.
In 1881, Ostwald He was appointed Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at the Riga Polytechnic Institute. In 1887 he accepted the chair of physical chemistry at the University of Leipzig, from which he retired in 1906. When he began his scientific career, chemistry, particularly in Germany, was dominated by synthetic organic chemistry, which was mainly concerned with investigating what Products could be produced from chemical compounds. Ostwald he recognized the lack of a deeper and quantitative understanding of general problems in chemistry, such as selective forces (chemical affinities or activities) in chemical reactions, which he sought to achieve through the application of physical measurements and mathematical reasoning.
In 1884, Ostwald received the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius’s doctoral thesis on the electrical conductivity of solutions, which contained the bold claim that salts, acids, and bases dissociate into electrically charged ions when dissolved in water. The dissociation theory eventually became the backbone of the new school of physical chemistry, whose members were initially known as the “Ionists” and soon included Arrhenius himself among its members. Ostwald immediately recognized that if all acids contained the same active ion, then the different chemical activities of various acids would simply be due to the concentration of active ions in each, and the concentration of active ions in turn would depend on the different degrees of dissociation of acids. Furthermore, if the law of mass action were applied to the dissociation reaction, a simple mathematical relationship could be derived between the degree of dissociation (a), the acid concentration (c), and a specific equilibrium constant for each acid. (k): a2 / (1 – a) c = k. This is the famous Ostwald’s Law of Dissolution (1888), who proved by measuring the electrical conductivities of more than 200 organic acids, thus supporting the theory of dissociation.
At the same time, the Dutch chemist Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff, who would join Ostwald and Arrhenius to form the “triumvirate” of the new school of physical chemistry, suggested his theory of osmosis, according to which the osmotic pressure of solutions depends on the concentration of dissociated ions, in analogy to the pressure ratio obeyed by a perfect gas. By putting his theory on general thermodynamic bases, van’t Hoff also derived Raoult’s vapor pressure laws, which claimed that adding a solute to a liquid lowers its freezing point and increases its boiling point due to a reduction in the vapor pressure of the solution. (For example, seawater has a lower freezing point and a higher boiling point than fresh water.) Through the combination of the work of the triumvirate, the new physical chemistry grew to a comprehensive level towards the theory of solutions based on thermodynamics and the theory of dissociation.
Ostwald he was especially successful in systematizing the subject of physical chemistry, applying it to other fields, and organizing a school. This was particularly important, since most chemists rejected the dissociation theory on partially justified grounds, so convincing them required both concessions about its restricted validity and evidence of its broad usefulness. In various textbooks on general, inorganic, and analytical chemistry, Ostwald He presented the new ideas not only holistically as a new branch of chemistry, but also as an extremely fruitful approach to classical problems. He particularly revolutionized analytical chemistry through solution theory and his indicator theory. His Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie (“Journal of Physical Chemistry”), founded in 1887, quickly established itself as the standard journal on the subject. In addition, the Leipzig Institute for Physical Chemistry attracted students and researchers from all over the world. Educated in the new ideas and experimental skills, numerous Ostwald students later became physical chemistry teachers in many countries.
The later work of Ostwald on catalysis originated in the first attempts to take reaction rates as a measure of chemical activity. As it turned out to be erroneous on thermodynamic grounds, he extensively investigated the temporal aspects of chemical reactions and provided a systematic conception of the field. He first recognized catalysis as the change in reaction rate by a foreign compound, which allowed him to measure catalytic activities. He distinguished catalysis from activation and autocatalysis, which he considered essential for biological systems. His most famous contribution to applied chemistry was in the catalytic oxidation of ammonia to nitric acid, a proprietary process still used in industrial fertilizer production.
In the late 1880s, the interests of Ostwald they had begun to include cultural and philosophical aspects of science. In 1889 he began republishing famous historical science articles in his series Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften (“Classics of the exact sciences”), with more than 40 books published during the first four years. The history of chemistry, which was already part of his textbooks for educational reasons, became a subject of its own in many other books. He also published a volume on natural philosophy, derived from a series of lectures (1905–06) that he had given as the first exchange professor at Harvard University in the United States. He was particularly interested in the general laws of scientific progress, the psychological characteristics of great scientists, and the conditions for scientific creativity.
After formally retiring in 1906, Ostwald He continued as an independent researcher on his private estate near Leipzig, where he had assembled a large library and laboratory. He began another scientific career in color theory in his 60s, complementing his lifelong passion for painting. Once again, he applied the multi-level approach characteristic of his previous work. He developed instruments for measuring colors, worked out a sophisticated classification of colors to derive mathematical laws of harmony, produced specimens in his chemical laboratory, founded a paint box factory, wrote several textbooks on color theory and its history, and was active. in art education reforms. After a short period with bladder and prostate problems, Ostwald he died in a Leipzig hospital and was buried on his private property.
Ostwald he was a man of science in the broadest sense and an extremely prolific writer. He was the editor of several scientific and philosophical journals, and wrote 45 books and many brochures, around 500 scientific articles, some 5,000 reviews, and more than 10,000 letters. He was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria, and rates of chemical reaction.