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Svante Arrhenius
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Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. He proposed a relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature. He found that the average surface temperature of the earth is about 15oC because of the infrared absorption capacity of water vapor and carbon dioxide. This is called the natural greenhouse effect. Arrhenius suggested a doubling of the CO2 concentration would lead to a 5oC temperature rise. He and Thomas Chamberlin calculated that human activities could warm the earth by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
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Svante Arrhenius was a child prodigy, received one of the first Nobel Prizes, and was director of the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry. Even so, the first half of his professional career was a struggle against the establishment that might have caused other scientists to give up. His is an example of perseverance in the face of adversity and belief in one’s self and one’s work. Students can relate to these themes, as well as to the fact that despite being enormously bright, Arrhenius barely passed his doctoral examination, couldn’t get a job, and was forced to go outside of his country to pursue his research. His was truly a labor of love.
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The global warming hypothesis originated in 1896 when Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, developed the theory that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would cause global temperatures to rise by trapping excess heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Arrhenius understood that the earth’s climate is heated by a process known as the greenhouse effect. While close to half the solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface is reflected back into space, the remainder is absorbed by land masses and oceans, warming the earth’s surface and atmosphere. This warming process radiates energy, most of which passes through the atmosphere and back into space. However, small concentrations of greenhouse gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide convert some of this energy to heat and either absorb it or reflect it back to the earth’s surface. These heat-trapping gases work much like a greenhouse: Sunlight passes through, but a certain amount of radiated heat remains trapped.
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Svante Arrhenius received the Nobel Prize in 1903 for his studies of electrolytic dissociation in solutions, work which was on the borderland of physics and chemistry. Two years later he assumed the directorship of the Nobel Institute for Physical Chemistry, a post he held until his death. His proclivity for interdisciplinary topics led him to apply principles from physical chemistry to immunology and to advance theories of cosmology and the origin of life (Worlds in the Making, 1908). His broad scientific interests and his position in the Nobel Institute placed him at the center of international communities of physical and life scientists.
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Svante Arrhenius was born in Vik, Sweden, and became the first native of that country to win the Nobel Prize. The award for chemistry was bestowed to him in honor of his theory of electrolytic dissociation, though in its incipient form, which appeared in his doctoral dissertation, the theory was poorly received by his professors. The barely passing grade that he was given for the dissertation did not discourage Arrhenius... and his persistence eventually led to the general acceptance of many of his ideas regarding electrolytes, acids, bases and chemical reactions.
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Svante Arrhenius was born on Feb. 19, 1859, at Vik near Uppsala, the son of Svante Gustav and Carolina Thunberg Arrhenius. His father was a land surveyor and later a supervisor at the University of Uppsala.
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Svante Arrhenius