100th Guess the Chemist - ChemistryViews

ChemistryViews celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, and this month marks the 100th installment of our Guess the Chemist quiz. You can try to solve the latest quiz here.

Over the years, the quiz has covered many eminent chemists who have made important discoveries or useful inventions. You can read about the interesting life stories of these scientists by clicking on the links in the list below.

In addition to the quiz, this month there is a “Which chemist is in the picture?” competition on social media. We post a new picture every week on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and uncover a little more of each picture every day. Participants have the chance to win a ChemistryViews power bank.


1		Robert Boyle Discovered Boyle’s law, which describes the relationship between pressure and volume of a gas

2		Agnes Pockels Pioneered research in the field of surface tension and the measurement of surface films

3		Louis de Broglie Proposed the theory of the wave-particle duality of matter

4		Louis Pasteur Invented pasteurization, which conserves food by killing pathogens

5		Herbert C. Brown Introduced hydroborations to organic chemistry and co-discovered sodium borohydride

6		Max von Laue Discovered the diffraction of X-rays by crystals

7		Archer John Porter Martin Invented partition chromatography together with Richard Synge

8		Blaise Pascal Made important contributions to probability theory and the understanding of the equilibrium of fluids

9		Joji Sakurai Was the first chemistry professor at Tokyo University and helped found the Japanese research institute RIKEN

10		Tetsuo Nozoe Worked on the isolation of natural products and collected over 4000 signatures from famous scientists

11		Alfred Nobel Invented dynamite and established the Nobel Prize in his will

12		Ellen Swallow Richards Was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an environmental chemist

13		Theodore William Richards Determined the exact atomic weights of many chemical elements

14		Anders Gustav Ekeberg Discovered the transition metal tantalum

15		Kurt Zosel Patented the use of supercritical fluid extraction in the decaffeination of coffee

16		Zefram Cochrane Invents the fictional faster-than-light “warp drive” in the Star Trek universe

17		Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin Discovered chromium and beryllium

18		Erik Christian Clemmensen Invented the Clemmensen reduction, which converts carbonyls to methylene groups

19		Mildred Cohn Made important contributions to the understanding of enzymatic reactions

20		Friedrich Heinrich August Klatte Received the first patent for polyvinyl chloride (PVC)

21		Ryoji Noyori Developed chirally catalyzed hydrogenation reactions using ruthenium–BINAP complexes

22		Sir Christopher Kelk Ingold Performed pioneering work on reaction mechanisms and coined terms such as nucleophilic and electrophilic

23		Albert Hofmann Discovered the psychopharmacological effects of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide)

24		Friedrich Bergius Developed the Bergius process for producing synthetic fuel from coal

25		Fritz Haber Co-invented the Haber-Bosch process for the synthesis of ammonia (see also Guess the Chemist (40))

26		Leo Hendrik Baekeland Invented bakelite, one of the first synthetic plastics

27		James Mason Crafts Co-developed the Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation reactions, which can functionalize aromatic rings

28		Michel Eugène Chevreul Studied fatty acids and improved soap and candle production

29		Sir Joseph Wilson Swan Was one of the inventors of the incandescent light bulb

30		Walther Nernst Is best known for the Nernst equation, which gives the potential of a half-cell in electrochemistry

31		Dorothy Hodgkin Pioneered the study of biomolecules by X-ray crystallography

32		Linus Pauling Elucidated the quantum mechanical nature of the chemical bond

33		Jean-Marie Lehn Made important contributions to the inception of supramolecular chemistry

34		Feodor Felix Konrad Lynen Discovered critical details of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism

35		Hans von Euler-Chelpin Explained the enzymatic fermentation of sugar

36		William M. Burton Developed the first commercially successful thermal cracking method for producing gasoline

37		Friedrich August Kekulé Assigned the cyclic structure to benzene

38		Martin Kamen Confirmed the existence of the carbon isotope ¹⁴C, which is used in radiocarbon dating

39		Maxwell Simpson Performed the first synthesis of succinic acid

40		Carl Bosch Co-invented the Haber-Bosch process for the synthesis of ammonia (see also Guess the Chemist (25))

41		Clara Immerwahr Was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in chemistry in Germany and an activist for women’s rights

42		Emil Knoevenagel Developed the Knoevenagel condensation, a modified aldol condensation

43		Albert Ghiorso Co-discovered 12 chemical elements

44		Paul Ehrlich Made seminal contributions to immunology and developed treatments for syphilis and diphtheria

45		Hermann Staudinger Is considered the “father of polymer chemistry” and discovered the first ketene

46		Robert Burns Woodward Co-discovered the Woodward-Hoffmann rules, which predict the barrier heights of pericyclic reactions

47		Henry Taube Made seminal contributions to the understanding of electron exchange and ligand exchange in complexes

48		Glenn T. Seaborg Co-discovered ten transuranium elements

49		Antonio de Ulloa Is credited with the first scientific description of platinum

50		Moses Gomberg Discovered the first stable free radical

51		Christian B. Anfinsen Discovered important aspects of protein folding

52		Pehr Victor Edman Invented a breakthrough method for sequencing proteins

53		Adolph Frank Recognized the potential of potash for fertilizer production

54		Francis Crick Co-discovered the double helix structure of DNA

55		Sir William Ramsay Discovered multiple noble gases

56		Charles Frédéric Gerhardt Developed the concept of homologous series

57		William Lash Miller Was the leading proponent of Gibbs’ thermodynamics in North America

58		Samuel Eyde Co-developed the Birkeland–Eyde process for the fixation of nitrogen

59		Peter Debye Performed important investigations on dipole moments and on X-ray diffraction

60		Alfred Werner Developed the concept of the coordination number

61		Johan August Arfwedson Discovered lithium

62		Herbert A. Hauptman Laid the mathematical groundwork for solving crystal structures

63		John Kendrew Discovered the structure of myoglobin

64		Ines Mandl Discovered collagenase

65		August Wilhelm von Hofmann Made important contributions to organic chemistry

66		Daniel Vorländer Was a liquid crystal pioneer

67		Richard Kuhn Carried out groundbreaking work on the structures of vitamins

68		Johan Gadolin Discovered the first rare-earth compounds

69		Sir John Cornforth Explained the biosynthesis of cholesterol

70		Rodney R. Porter Discovered the structure of antibodies

71		Elmer McCollum Discovered the first vitamins

72		William Allen Miller Was a pioneer of spectral analysis and astrochemistry

73		Søren Sørensen Developed the concept of the pH scale

74		Hertha Sponer Co-developed the Birge–Sponer method

75		Henri Sainte-Claire Deville Discovered toluene and nitrogen pentoxide

76		Harold Urey Co-discovered deuterium

77		Alexander Mitscherlich Developed an early version of the sulfite process for the production of cellulose from wood

78		Jerome Karle Co-developed the theoretical foundation for the determination of crystal structures by X-ray diffraction

79		Otto Hahn Discovered nuclear fission

80		Christian Friedrich Schönbein Discovered ozone and guncotton

81		Sir Derek Barton Pioneered the conformational analysis of organic molecules

82		Lise Meitner Made important contributions to nuclear chemistry

83		Ernst Otto Fischer Co-discovered the structure of ferrocene

84		James Prescott Joule Formulated Joule’s first and second laws and co-discovered the Joule–Thomson effect

85		Richard Abegg Pioneered valence theory

86		Izaak Kolthoff Pioneered modern analytical chemistry

87		Larned B. Asprey Pioneered actinide and fluoride chemistry

88		Donald J. Cram Pioneered host–guest chemistry

89		Antoine Lavoisier Disproved the phlogiston theory; often considered the father of modern chemistry

90		Lord Rayleigh Co-discovered argon

91		John Dalton Introduced modern atomic theory

92		Richard Laurence Millington Synge Co-developed partition chromatography

93		Thomas Graham Formulated Graham’s law and is considered one of the founders of colloid chemistry

94		Otto Linné Erdmann Determined atomic weights

95		Mitsuru Kuhara First President of the Tokyo Chemical Society, one of the earliest chemical societies

96		Julia Lermontova First Russian woman to receive a doctoral degree in chemistry

97		Wilhelm Pfeffer Developed the Pfeffer cell, a device to measure osmotic pressure

98		Carl Alexander von Martius Discovered Martius yellow, the first industrially used naphthalin-based dye

99		Johann Rudolph Glauber Discovered sodium sulfate, also known as Glauber’s salt

100		Guess the Chemist (100) The scientist we are looking for this time developed one of the first periodic tables of the elements

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