Talk:Gilbert N. Lewis

Deuterium, heavy water
Skoch3 (talk) 17:18, 9 November 2009 (UTC): I put some "citation needed" templates on the article page, where I think some deuterium / heavy water citations are needed. Hopefully I'll find the best ones to put in, but for now, I'm going to make a potential list here:

Bond, electron bond
I've seen Lewis credited with the idea atoms join by electron bonds, in 1913. Can anybody confirm? Trekphiler 10:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I also have a problem with the 1902 date given in the beginning of the article. This article and others I've seen cite 1916 as the date of the theory, and it would make sense that it might have begun in 1913, rather than 1902.  --Eliyahu S Talk 09:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If you look up the original references you'll see that Lewis claims that he came up with some of these ideas in 1902, but didn't publish them until 1913 (or was it 1916)?. I think I saw a picture of one of his notebooks (I don't remember where), supposedly from 1902, which had drawings of his cubical atoms. --Itub 18:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Lewis was using dot's to represent electrons, in about 1900, and was lecturing to chemistry students at Harvard using these dots. The following diagram is dated from 1902:

His famous article, The Atom and The Molecule, was published in 1916. Berzelius, however, formulated one of the first electro-chemical theories of bonding in 1813. In 1874, using this model as a basis, in a paper entitled ‘On the Physical Units of Nature’, Irish physicist George Stoney postulated that in nature there exist fundamental units or quantities of electricity, which are independent of any particular body, and that exchanges of these electrical units account for chemical bonds:

For each chemical bond which is ruptured within an electrolyte a certain quantity of electricity traverses the electrolyte which is the same in all cases.

I hope that helps. The real history, of course, is much bigger. --Sadi Carnot 01:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Gilbert N. Lewis
Isn't there an american inventor called Isaac Newton Lewis? Andrzejestrować Zajaczajkowski Plecaxpiwórserafinowiczaświadzenie Poświadczyxwiadectwo-Bjornovich (talk) (contributions) 14:29, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Gilbert N. Lewis
Isn't there an american inventor called Isaac Newton Lewis? Andrzejestrować Zajaczajkowski Plecaxpiwórserafinowiczaświadzenie Poświadczyxwiadectwo-Bjornovich (talk) (contributions) 14:29, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'll have to say yes since you have proven it with a link to his article. But I don't think the similarity of names justifies any mention of him in this article, unless you also have evidence that the two are connected in some way. Dirac66 (talk) 14:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Depression
Is a complex disease. It is not "brought on by lunch". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.21.185.177 (talk) 22:49, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a major depressive episode brought on by meeting Langmuir for lunch in view of their long rivalry. Can someone with knowledge of psychiatry give an opinion on whether that would be more reasonable? Dirac66 (talk) 03:17, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

If Lewis had killed himself with cyanide, it would have been painfully obvious. Victims of cyanide develop an incredibly red face. The remnants of the act would have been observed since he would have been dead within eight seconds. Virtually anyone with the faculties to look around should have been able to deduce whether he killed himself with cyanide. I assume a medical examiner was involved and a poisoning should have shown in his report.

As to his psychological state, who knows? He may have battled depression his entire life and then a single lunch with his adversary may have precipitated the act. The human mind is fragile, and often those who are the greatest are also the most at risk. Regardless, Lewis was a great scientist, a giant among men. Lewis deserved the Nobel prize over Barack Obama 41 times over! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.90.106.68 (talk) 02:32, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You realize he wouldn't have been in line for a peace prize...? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.18.125.136 (talk) 21:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Date of birth: sources conflict
After a numbered editor two days ago changed the date of birth in the infobox from October 23 (1875) to October 28, I decided to check sources before reverting. I found no sources for October 28, but was surprised to find apparently reliable sources for October 25 as well as October 23. The source now cited in the intro is the Woodrow Wilson Leadership Program site, which leads to an error message pointing to a site map from which I could not locate anything about G.N.Lewis.

One source for October 25 are the National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir written in 1958 by the eminent chemist Joel Henry Hildebrand and listed in the External Links for this article. Another is the Encyclopedia.com Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. These two would seem to be reliable sources.

On the other hand Google searches do turn up sources for October 23. Some are apparently mirror sites of Wikipedia which has long said October 23, but I also found this Encyclopedia Britannica site. So who do we believe? At least everyone agrees that the year was 1875. Dirac66 (talk) 02:14, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * No reaction after 1.6 years, so I have inserted all 3 conflicting sources named above as these references seem normally reliable. And I have deleted the Woodrow Wilson program site since it does not lead to any info about Lewis. Dirac66 (talk) 20:30, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

"Their" thesis?
The footnote for the reference for about Lewis's Ph.D. dissertation added today includes the words: Lewis co-authored his Ph.D. thesis with Theodore William Richards; their thesis was titled "Some electrochemical and thermochemical relations of zinc and cadmium amalgams". However Ph.D. dissertations invariably have only one author, since only one person uses the thesis to obtain his Ph.D. So I have checked the reference (after adding the URL found with a Google search) which is a biographical memoir of Lewis written by Joel Hildebrand.

Hildebrand's exact words on this point are: "HIS thesis was entitled, 'Some electrochemical and thermochemical relations of zinc and cadmium amalgams,' and was published  with Theodore William Richards as JOINT author." According to usual academic practice, this means that Lewis (the student) wrote the thesis, and published an abridged version in scientific papers with Richards (his supervisor) as joint (or co-)author of the papers (but not of the actual thesis). I will replace the word "their" by "his" as written by Hildebrand.Dirac66 (talk) 21:48, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: General Chemistry I
— Assignment last updated by Yonderling (talk) 00:44, 16 December 2022 (UTC)