Biography of Robert Bunsen

Elements of excellence

31 March 1811
16 August 1899
Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was born in Göttingen (Germany) on 31 March 1811. Chemist and physicist, is known to have perfected this burner tool in any chemical laboratory of the globe, which today is called by his name "Bunsen burner". The instrument itself was invented by Britain's Michael Faraday. Robert Bunsen is the last of four brothers: as a young man he attended the school in the German town of Holzminden and then deepen their study of chemistry at the University of Göttingen. Obtained his PhD at the age of nineteen, then for a long period, from 1830 to 1833, travels through Western Europe. In these years he met and knows Runge, the discoverer of aniline, Justus von Liebig in Giessen, and Mitscherlich in Bonn. Bunsen returns later in Germany and became professor in Göttingen: here he began his experimental studies on solubility of salts of arsenous acid.
For a long time the hydrated ferric oxide is used as an antidote for poisoning by arsenic, precisely because of the research of Robert Bunsen. In 1836 the German chemist takes the place of Friederich Woehler in Kassel. After teaching for two years accepts the offer of the University of Marburg: here his main job concerns the study of cacodyl derivatives. The results bring in brief fame and honour, but at this time he happens also to approach dangerously at risk of death, caused by arsenic poisoning. It should be mentioned also that following an explosion, a shard of glass exploded reached its eye, in the ruined beyond repair. In 1841, Bunsen creates a carbon electrode to use instead of the expensive Platinum electrode in the stack of Grove.
As Professor succeeds Leopold Gmelin at the University of Heidelberg in 1852. Using nitric acid can prepare many pure metals including chromium, magnesium, aluminum, manganese, sodium, barium, calcium and lithium through electrolysis. In the same year, he began a long association with Sir Henry Roscoe with the aim of studying the formation of hydrochloric acid from the use of hydrogen and chlorine. Bunsen stops cooperation with Roscoe in 1859 and joined Gustav Kirchhoff to study emission spectroscopy of elements. It is for this purpose that Bunsen burner which improves the special one had already invented Michael Faraday. In 1877 the couple Bunsen Kirchhoff are the first scientists to be awarded the Davy Medal (issued annually by the Royal Society, the British Academy of Sciences). He retired at the age of seventy-eight years to devote himself to geology, which for many years was his parallel passion, Robert Bunsen dies in Heidelberg on 16 August 1899 at the age of eighty-eight.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.