Who is Robert Wilhelm Bunsen?

Robert Wilhelm Bunsen was born on March 1811 – 16 August 1899). He was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and Kirchhoff.


















The best known for his invention of the improved gas flame device which bears his name: the Bunsen burner. However, Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen's contributions to science extend far beyond this one invention; he developed a number of other common laboratory instruments, as well as a new device and process for analyzing the elemental constituents of chemicals called spectroscopy. This new science, developed with Gustav Kirchhoff, was  probably his most important legacy to science. Bunsen received his doctorate in 1830 from the University of Göttingen, in his hometown. His high marks earned him a grant from the Hanoverian government and with those funds he traveled toBerlin, Bonn, Paris, and Vienna during the next three years.
 
Robert Wilhelm Bunsen did groundbreaking work in organic chemistry and spectrometry, but he's more famous for the laboratory gas burner that bears his name. Robert Bunsen was an extraordinary experimentalist and popular university teacher who made a name for himself in the 1830s with experiments using organic arsenic compounds. Those experiments nearly cost him his life -- an explosion caused the loss of sight in one eye and a bad case of arsenic poisoning, and he later forbade organic chemistry experiments in his lab. He taught for many years at the University of Marsburg (1838-51), but is most closely associated with the University of Heidelberg, where he worked from 1852 until his retirement in 1889.

Robert Bunsen invented many lab tools, including a grease-spot photometer, a galvanic battery and an ice calorimeter, and, with Gustav Robert Kirchhoff, a spectrometer (1859) that led to his discovery of the elements cesium and rubidium. Around 1855 he had university mechanic Peter Desaga build a gas burner that would produce a steady and near-colorless flame for lab experiments (Michael Faraday had used a similar burner). The result, known as a Bunsen burner, remains a common lab tool to this day.

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