Wilhelm Ostwald
Name in native script: Wilhelm Friedrich Ostwald
1853–1932, Riga, Russian Empire (now Latvia), Großbothen, Germany
Baltic German chemist and a founder of modern physical chemistry, known for work on catalysis and chemical equilibria; he received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Ostwald was born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, to a Baltic German family. He studied at the University of Dorpat (now the University of Tartu), taught in Riga, and became professor at Leipzig in 1887. Alongside Svante Arrhenius and Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, he helped establish physical chemistry as an independent scientific discipline.
He studied chemical kinetics and equilibria, catalysis, the electrical conductivity of electrolyte solutions, and dilution laws. The Ostwald process for producing nitric acid by catalytic oxidation of ammonia bears his name. The 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognized his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria, and reaction velocities.
Nobel-winning work
Ostwald received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 'for his work on catalysis and for his investigations into the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction'. He defined a catalyst as a substance that speeds a reaction without appearing in the product, studied acid/base catalysis quantitatively, and developed the Ostwald process for oxidizing ammonia to nitric acid (1901). He is counted among the founders of physical chemistry.
Workplaces: University of Leipzig, University of Tartu
Latvia, Germany