Robert Wilhelm Bunsen is probably best known for the laboratory gas burner which bears his name, though in fact, it was probably developed by his laboratory technician, Robert Desdega. Born in Göttingen, Bunsen studied chemistry at the local university and at Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Obtaining his doctorate in 1830, he taught at the Polytechnic Institute of Kassel and at the universities of Marburg and Breslau before becoming Professor of Experimental Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg in 1852, where he remained until his death.

Bunsen’s first important work was in the area of organic chemistry, where he studied the reactions of cacodyl, an organometallic compound of arsenic. In the process, he lost the sight of one of his eyes and nearly died of arsenic poisoning. His discovery in 1841 that thermally molded porous coke could be substituted for the platinum cathodes in both the Grove nitric acid cell and the potassium dichromate cell provided the major source of electrical energy for the 19th-century telegraphic industry. Using these cells, Bunsen also pioneered the electrochemical preparation of magnesium and several of the rare earth elements. Other areas of research included improvements in the development of gas analysis and flame tests. Use of the latter in conjunction with a glass prism led to the development of the Bunsen spectroscope in collaboration with the German physicist Gustav Kirchoff and to the spectroscopic discovery of the elements rubidium and cesium. Besides his burner, voltaic cells, and spectroscope, Bunsen also developed an ice calorimeter and his famous grease-spot photometer, used in his photochemical studies of the reaction between hydrogen and chlorine.

Although he wrote several papers during his career, Bunsen wrote only one book, Gasometrische Methoden. Published in 1857, the book covered his research on the phenomena of gases and brought gas analysis to a level of accuracy and simplicity reached earlier by gravimetric and titrimetric techniques.

A bachelor all of his life, Bunsen developed a number of personality quirks that became the subject of humorous anecdotes on the part of his students, who later collected them in several small booklets, which they published after his death.

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