Berzelius’ beaker
Raise a glass to the man behind much of the modern language of chemistry
Several years ago an old family friend in Italy sent me a four-volume set of Jöns Jakob Berzelius’ Textbook of Chemistry that she had recently inherited from her brother with a card saying ‘Only you can truly appreciate these’. Utterly delighted, I didn’t give the note much thought, but instead dived into the books, delighting in the tables of densities and giggling at observations of the tastes of different salts (‘the sulphate of yttria tastes like sugar’).
Berzelius is one of the towering figures of 19th century chemistry, a man who helped to solidify Antoine Lavoisier’s vision of the elements and who worked to systematise chemistry at all levels, not least by trying to rationalise measurement, inventing nomenclature and developing and codifying glassware. His childhood was not easy. His father, a schoolteacher, died when he was four and his mother died a few years later. Berzelius seems to have dealt with his loneliness by exploring the nearby forests. This continued in secondary school where, with the support of an enthusiastic teacher, he built up a big collection of insects and birds. Idyllic though this sounds, money was short and he worked as tutor-farmhand to support himself.