Robert Bunsen

@Chemists, Family and Family

Robert Bunsen was a German chemist who developed the Bunsen burner with Peter Desaga

Mar 30, 1811

GermanScientistsChemistsAries Celebrities
Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: March 30, 1811
  • Died on: August 16, 1899
  • Nationality: German
  • Famous: Scientists, Chemists
  • Known as: R. Bunsen
  • Universities:
    • University of Göttingen
  • Discoveries / Inventions:
    • Bunsen Burner

Robert Bunsen born at

Göttingen

Unsplash
Birth Place

Robert Bunsen never married. He was totally dedicated to his profession and was a very popular and much-loved scientist. As a teacher he doted on his students who also returned his affection.

Unsplash
Personal Life

He remained active until the very end of his life. Following his retirement at the age of 78, he focused his interest on geology and mineralogy. He died on 16 August 1899 at the age of 88.

Unsplash
Personal Life

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was born on 30 March 1811, in Göttingen, Westphalia, Rhine Confederation (now Germany) to Christian Bunsen and his wife, as the youngest of four sons. His father was the University of Göttingen's chief librarian and professor of modern philology while his mother was the daughter of a British-Hanoverian officer.

Unsplash
Childhood & Early Life

He graduated from the Gymnasium at Holzminden in 1828 following which he joined the University of Göttingen where he studied chemistry, physics, mineralogy, and mathematics. He was educated under the guidance of teachers such as Friedrich Stromeyer, Johann Friedrich Ludwig Hausmann, and Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Unsplash
Childhood & Early Life

He completed his doctorate in 1831 and spent the next couple of years travelling in Germany, France, and Austria. His journeys were enriching ones and he met several prominent scientists including Freidlieb Runge, Justus Liebig, Eilhard Mitcherlich, Henri-Victor Regnault, Théophile Pelouze, and César Despretz.

Unsplash
Childhood & Early Life

He began his academic career in 1833, becoming a lecturer at Göttingen. From the very beginning, he started experimenting in the laboratory. His initial experiments were on the (in) solubility of metal salts of arsenous acid. The experiments were of a very dangerous nature and he almost lost his life to arsenic poisoning.

Unsplash
Career

In 1836, Bunsen succeeded Friedrich Wöhler at the Polytechnic School of Kassel. He worked there for three years before taking up the position of an associate professor at the University of Marburg. He was made a full professor in 1841.

Unsplash
Career

By this time he was beginning to get much recognition for his chemical experiments with dangerous substances. One of his major inventions, the Bunsen cell battery, using a carbon electrode instead of the expensive platinum electrode, was also made in 1841.

Unsplash
Career

He was known to risk his own safety and health in the pursuit of scientific discoveries. In 1843, he lost the use of his right eye in an explosion of cacodyl cyanide, an extremely toxic substance that undergoes spontaneous combustion in dry air.

Unsplash
Career

He became a professor at the University of Breslau in 1851. There he met Gustav Kirchhoff, with who he would later collaborate to perform important research in spectroscopy.

Unsplash
Career

Working along with his laboratory assistant Peter Desaga, Robert Bunsen designed a burner that produces a single open gas flame, which is used for heating, sterilization, and combustion. The burners, known as Bunsen burners, are used in laboratories all around the world.

Unsplash
Major Works

He invented the Bunsen cell by improving upon the Grove cell designed by William Robert Grove. Bunsen replaced the Grove cell’s expensive platinum cathode with carbon in the form of pulverized coal and coke.

Unsplash
Major Works