Gilbert Newton Lewis

Great Lives

Professor Tarasankar Pal, Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

   The architect of the Modern Periodic Table - Dmitri Mendeleev had missed the Nobel Prize by just one vote.
Gilbert Newton Lewis, another great scientist didn't receive it either, despite being nominated forty-one times for it; quite unfortunate indeed! Lewis has many achievements in his name - however his proposition of the possible arrangement of atoms in a cubical arrangement (with one atom each at the corners) was what made him popular among students. His theory explained Newlands Octet Rule, an early interpretation of the recurring properties of the elements. He explained his rudimentary proposition to his students at Harvard around 1902, but published his 33 page-long paper in the year 1916 at University of California, Berkeley.
   He, for the first time, introduced that bonding can take place as the result of sharing of electrons between two atoms. Lewis's model of covalent explained the tetrahedral arrangement of bonds in the carbon atom, the property on which our entire understanding of organic chemistry is based today. Lewis's bonding model spread as scientists and researches started to modify and use it in the fields of coordination (semi-polar) bonding and quantum physics. Linus Pauling presented his modified version as the valence Bond Theory later in 1939. However, Lewis-dot structures continue to be widespread as the easiest way to represent valencies of atoms.
   Lewis was shy, diffident and not a good orator. He was somewhat disappointed by the attitude of physicists as they considered his theory as a crude model. In turn, Lewis was critical to conceive the idea of completely mobile electrons. Lewis's theory stood on a strong background of chemical evidence that molecules have definite shapes, and in fact, several common solids like table salt exhibit lattice structure similar to what Lewis had suggested. His work on thermodynamics had made him to conclude that thermodynamic systems - chemical reactions, involved quantities more than just the heat and pressure of a system. Quantities like entropy and free energy were later used in unification of thermodynamic equations. On March 23, 1946, Lewis was found dead in his Berkely Laboratory. After Lewis's death, his children followed their father's career in chemistry.

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   The architect of the Modern Periodic Table - Dmitri Mendeleev had missed the Nobel Prize by just one vote.
Gilbert Newton Lewis, another great scientist didn't receive it either, despite being nominated forty-one times for it; quite unfortunate indeed! Lewis has many achievements in his name - however his proposition of the possible arrangement of atoms in a cubical arrangement (with one atom each at the corners) was what made him popular among students. His theory explained Newlands Octet Rule, an early interpretation of the recurring properties of the elements. He explained his rudimentary proposition to his students at Harvard around 1902, but published his 33 page-long paper in the year 1916 at University of California, Berkeley.
   He, for the first time, introduced that bonding can take place as the result of sharing of electrons between two atoms. Lewis's model of covalent explained the tetrahedral arrangement of bonds in the carbon atom, the property on which our entire understanding of organic chemistry is based today. Lewis's bonding model spread as scientists and researches started to modify and use it in the fields of coordination (semi-polar) bonding and quantum physics. Linus Pauling presented his modified version as the valence Bond Theory later in 1939. However, Lewis-dot structures continue to be widespread as the easiest way to represent valencies of atoms.
   Lewis was shy, diffident and not a good orator. He was somewhat disappointed by the attitude of physicists as they considered his theory as a crude model. In turn, Lewis was critical to conceive the idea of completely mobile electrons. Lewis's theory stood on a strong background of chemical evidence that molecules have definite shapes, and in fact, several common solids like table salt exhibit lattice structure similar to what Lewis had suggested. His work on thermodynamics had made him to conclude that thermodynamic systems - chemical reactions, involved quantities more than just the heat and pressure of a system. Quantities like entropy and free energy were later used in unification of thermodynamic equations. On March 23, 1946, Lewis was found dead in his Berkely Laboratory. After Lewis's death, his children followed their father's career in chemistry.

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