ASSIGNMENT 1

1. Give the ground state electron configuration for each of the following elements:

a. B- 1s1 2s2 2p2

b. P- 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p3
c. C- 1s2 2s2 2p2
d. O- 1s2 2s2 2p4
e. Cl- 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p5

2. Give the educational background of the following scientists and cite their contributions
and achievements to organic chemistry:

A. Archibald Scott Couper- Couper published his "New Chemical Theory" in

French in a condensed form on 14 June 1858, then in detailed papers simultaneously in
French and English in August 1858. Couper's idea that carbon atoms can link to each
other following valence regularities was independent of a paper by August Kekulé
proposing the same concept.However, through a misunderstanding with Wurtz, Kekulé's
paper appeared in print first, in May 1858, and so Kekulé captured the priority for the
discovery of the self-linking of carbon atoms. When Couper angrily confronted Wurtz,
Wurtz expelled him from the laboratory.

In December 1858, Couper received an offer of an assistantship from the University of

Edinburgh. However, Couper's health began to decline after this disappointment. In May
1859 he suffered a nervous breakdown, and entered an institution as a private patient.
Released in July 1859, he almost immediately suffered a relapse -- it was said to have
been from sunstroke -- and was treated again until November 1862. But his health was
now broken, and he did no more serious work, spending the last 30 years of his life in the
care of his mother.

B. Richard Erlenmeyer- He studied at Gießen but not under Justus von Liebig -
rather he worked with Liebig's student Will and with Fresenius - and at Heidelberg under
Friedrich Kekulé. He also associated himself with Robert Bunsen in the study of
fertilizers. Erlenmeyer was professor of chemistry at the Munich Polytechnic School
from 1868 to 1883. His experimental work included the discovery and synthesis of
several organic compounds, e.g., isobutyric acid (1865); in 1861 he invented the conical
flask that bears his name. Among the first to adopt structural formulas based on valence,
he proposed the modern naphthalene formula of two benzene rings sharing two carbon
atoms. In 1880 he formulated the Erlenmeyer Rule: All alcohols in which the hydroxyl
group is attached directly to a double-bonded carbon atom become aldehydes or ketones.

C. Jacobus Hendricus van’t Hoff- was a Dutch physical and organic chemist and
the winner of the inaugural Nobel Prize in chemistry. His research on chemical kinetics,
chemical equilibrium, osmotic pressure and stereochemistry are among his most notable
achievements. Through these achievements, Van’t Hoff helped found the discipline of
physical chemistry as it is known today. Before receiving his doctorate, van’t Hoff had
already published the first of his important contributions to organic chemistry. In 1874 he
accounted for the phenomenon of optical activity by assuming that the chemical bonds
between carbon atoms and their neighbors were directed towards the corners of a regular
tetrahedron. This three-dimensional structure perfectly accounted for the isomers found in
nature (stereochemistry). He shares credit for this idea with the French chemist Joseph Le
Bel, who independently came up with the same idea. In 1884 van 't Hoff published his
research on chemical kinetics, naming it Études de Dynamique chimique ("Studies in
Chemical Dynamics"), in which he described a new method for determining the order of
a reaction using graphics, and applied the laws of thermodynamics to chemical equilibria.
He also introduced the modern concept of chemical affinity. In 1886 he showed a
similarity between the behaviour of dilute solutions and gases. In 1887 he and German
chemist Wilhelm Ostwald founded an influential scientific magazine named Zeitschrift
für physikalische Chemie ("Journal of Physical Chemistry"). He worked on Svante
Arrhenius's theory of the dissociation of electrolytes and in 1889 provided physical
justification for the Arrhenius equation. In 1896 he became professor to the Prussian
Academy of Science at Berlin. His studies of the salt deposits at Stassfurt contributed to
Prussia's chemical industry.

D. Joseph Achille Le Bel- was a French chemist, who was best known for his work
in stereochemistry. He was born on 21 January 1847 in Pechelbronn and educated at the
École Polytechnique in Paris. In 1874 he announced his theory outlining the relationship
between molecular structure and optical activity, which laid the foundation of the science
of Stereochemistry, dealing with the spatial arrangement of atoms in molecules. This
hypothesis was put forward in the same year by the Dutch physical chemist Jacobus
Henricus van’t Hoff. Le Bel wrote Cosmologie Rationelle (Rational Cosmology) in 1929.

E. August Kekule- was a German organic chemist. One of the most prominent
chemists in Europe from the 1850s until his death, especially in the theoretical realm, he
was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure.

F. Michel Eugene Chevreul- was a French chemist whose work with fatty acids led
to early applications in the fields of art and science. He is credited with the discovery of
margaric acid and designing an early form of soap made from animal fats and salt. He
lived to 102 and was a pioneer in the field of gerontology. Chevreul's scientific work
covered a wide range, but he is best known for the classical researches he carried out on
animal fats, published in 1823 (Recherches sur les corps gras d'origine animale). These
enabled him to elucidate the true nature of soap; he was also able to discover the
composition of stearin, a white substance found in the solid parts of most animal and
vegetable fats, and olein, the liquid part of any fat, and to isolate stearic and oleic acids,
the names of which he invented. This work led to important improvements in the
processes of candle-manufacture.

G. William Thomas Brande- he was apprenticed, in 1802, to his brother, an

apothecary, with the view of adopting the profession of medicine. However, Brande's
bent was towards chemistry, a sound knowledge of which he acquired in his spare time.
In 1812 he was appointed professor of chemistry to the Apothecaries' Society, and
delivered a course of lectures before the Board of Agriculture in place of Sir Humphry
Davy, whom in the following year he succeeded in the chair of chemistry at the Royal
Institution, London. From about 1823 onwards, Brande worked increasingly with the
Royal Mint, eventually becoming Superintendent of the Coining and Die Department.

Brande's Manual of Chemistry, first published in 1819, enjoyed wide popularity, and
among other works he brought out a Dictionary of Science, Literature and Art in 1842.
He was working on a new edition when he died at Tunbridge Wells.

H. Gilbert Newton Lewis- was an American physical chemist known for the
discovery of the covalent bond (see his Lewis dot structures and his 1916 paper "The
Atom and the Molecule"), his purification of heavy water, his reformulation of chemical
thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to ordinary chemists,
his theory of Lewis acids and bases, and his photochemical experiments. In 1926, Lewis
coined the term "photon" for the smallest unit of radiant energy. He was a brother of
Alpha Chi Sigma, the professional chemistry fraternity, and for most of his long
professor career, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Lewis
was born and raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts, where there exists a street named for
him, G.N. Lewis Way, off of Summer Street. Additionally, the wing of the new
Weymouth High School Chemistry department has been named in his honor. After
earning his Ph.D. at Harvard under the direction of Theodore Richards, Lewis stayed as
an instructor for a year before taking a traveling fellowship, studying under the physical
chemists Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig and physicist Walther Nernst at Göttingen. While
working in Nernst's lab, Nernst and Lewis apparently developed a lifelong enmity. A
friend of Nernst's, Walther Palmaer, was a member of the Nobel Chemistry Committee.
There is evidence that he used the Nobel nominating and reporting procedures to block a
Nobel Prize for Lewis in thermodynamics by nominating Lewis for the prize three times,
and then using his position as a committee member to write negative reports.

I. Linus Carl Pauling- was an American chemist, peace activist, author, and
educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the
most important scientists in any field of the 20th century.Pauling was among the first
scientists to work in the fields of quantum chemistry and of molecular biology. He is one
of only four individuals to have won multiple Nobel Prizes.He is one of only two people
awarded two Nobel Prizes in different fields (the Chemistry and Peace prizes), the other
being Marie Curie (the Chemistry and Physics prizes), and the only person awarded two
unshared prizes.