Tobias Smollett called Samuel Johnson “that great Cham of literature.” Jons Jacob Berzelius qualifies equally as the great Cham of chemistry. Indeed a case can be made that Berzelius qualifies as the most complete chemist the science has yet known. Formidably industrious, he was, like Johnson, also melancholy, irascible, and a bit of a bully.

Berzelius was born on August 20, 1779, and lost his father at the age of four. He later became a medical student at Uppsala where his M.D. thesis involved a study of the effect of galvanic electricity upon diseased patients. Short of electrocution, the current had little effect. His first chemical experience came with the analyses of mineral spring waters. This led to an unpaid appointment at the College of Medicine in Stockholm where he lodged in the house of Wilhelm Hisinger, a wealthy scientific amateur. Together they carried out pioneer studies on electrochemistry. However, as Berzelius later grumped, it was Humphry Davy who got most of the credit. In 1810 Berzelius at last achieved professional stability on the staff of the newly established Karolinska Institutet. Here he soon established himself a master of virtually all of chemistry. He initiated his lifelong study of combining weights and published landmark tables of atomic weights, introduced our familiar alphabetic symbols, isolated cerium, selenium, and thorium, and minted words such as allotropy, isomerism, and protein catalyst.

His dualistic theory of chemical combination was very influential, and though partly undermined by the rise of organic chemistry, it was to rule inorganic chemistry for close to a century. Over the years, Berzelius published a large volume of works in many editions and many translations including his Lehrbuch der Chemie. In old age he became conservative and autocratic, and it is a powerfully dyspeptic visage that glowers at us in a 1844 Daguerrotype.

References
DSB, Vol. II, pp. 90-97.
J. E. Jorpes, Jac Berzelius, His Life and Work. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1966.

Bioanalytical Systems, Inc.