Chemistry: 1903

Arrhenius, Svante August pronounced ahr RAY nih us, (1859-1927), was a Swedish chemist and physicist. His theory of electrolytic dissociation (or ionization) in the conductivity of solutions developed the original work of Sir Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday. It won for him the 1903 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Arrhenius first presented the theory as his doctoral thesis at Uppsala University in 1884. All the leading scientists of the world gradually accepted it.

Arrhenius was born in Wik, near Uppsala. He directed the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry near Stockholm from 1905 to 1927. He wrote Worlds in the Making (1908), Theories of Solutions (1912), and Quantitative Laws in Biological Chemistry (1915).