How Did Analytical Chemistry Originate

That is a very good question. Actually, the tools and basic chemical meas-

urements date back to the earliest recorded history. Fire assays for gold are

referred to in Zechariah 13:9, and the King of Babylon complained to the

Egyptian Pharoah Ammenophis the Fourth (1375-1350 Bc) that gold he had

received from the pharaoh was "less than its weight" after putting it in a fur-

nace. The perceived value of gold, in fact, was probably a major incentive

for acquiring analytical knowledge. Archimedes (287-212 BC) did nonde-

structive testing of the golden wreath of King Hieron. He placed lumps of

gold and silver equal in weight to the wreath in jar full of water and mea-

sured the amount of water displaced by all three. The wreath displaced an

amount between the gold and silver, proving it was not pure gold!

The balance is of such early origin that it was ascribed to the gods in

the earliest documents found. The Babylonians created standard weights

in 2600 BC and considered them so important that their use was supervised

by the priests.

The alchemists accumulated the chemical knowledge that formed the

basis for quantitative analysis as we know it today. Robert Boyle coined

the term analyst in his 1661 book, The Sceptical Chymist. Antoine Lavoisier

has been considered the "father of analytical chemistry" because of the care-

ful quantitative experiments he performed on conservation of mass (using

the analytical balance). (Lavoisier was actually a tax collector and dabhled

in science on the side. He was guillotined on May 8, 1793, during the French

Revolution because of his activities as a tax collector.)

Gravimetry was developed in the seventeenth century, and titrimetry in

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Guy-Lussac, in 1829, assayed silver

by titration with 0.05% relative accuracy and precision!

Textbooks of analytical chemistry began appearing in the 1800s. Karl

Fresenius published Anleimng ;ur Quanritaven Chemischen Analyse in Ger-

many in 1845. Wilhelm Ostwald published an influential text on the scientific

fundamentals of analytical chemistry in 1894 entitled Die wissenschaflichen

Grundagen der analytischen Chemie. and this book introduced theoretical ex-

planations of analytical phenomena using equilibrium constants (thank him

for Chapter 6 and applications in other chapters).

The twentieth century saw the evolution of instrumental techniques.

Steven Popoff’s second edition of Quantitative Analysis in 1927 included

electroanalysis, conductimetric titrations, and colorimetric methods. Today,

of course, analytical teclmology has progressed to include sophisticated and

powerful computer—contro1led instrumentation and the ability to perform

highly complex analyses and measurements at extremely low concentrations.

This text will teach you the fundamentals and give you the tools to

tackle most analytical problems. Happy journey. For more on the evolution

of the field,