Chemistry Clarity · chemistryclarity.com
Special topics
Go beyond the lessons: the stories behind medicines from nature, the organic mechanisms students find hardest, and the chemists who shaped the subject.
1804 Morphine isolated from opium
The first alkaloid ever isolated from a plant, still one of the most important painkillers in medicine.
From opium in ancient Mesopotamia to Sertürner's isolation of morphine in 1804, its complex structure (1925) and synthesis (1952), how it relieves pain, and why it is addictive.
1820 Quinine isolated from cinchona bark
The bark that treated malaria for 300 years, and the failed synthesis that started the chemical industry.
Cinchona bark from the Andes, the isolation of quinine in 1820, Perkin's accidental discovery of the first synthetic dye in 1856, the long road to its synthesis, and why tonic water glows.
1897 Aspirin first made in pure form
How a folk remedy for fever became one of the most widely used medicines in the world.
The 3500-year journey of aspirin: willow bark, salicin and salicylic acid, Bayer's acetylated version of 1897, and how its mechanism was finally explained in 1971.
One step or two? How to predict which mechanism a haloalkane follows, and why it matters.
Nucleophilic substitution step by step: curved arrows, rate laws, stereochemistry, and the four factors (substrate, nucleophile, solvent, leaving group) that decide between SN1 and SN2.
Why HBr adds to propene the way it does, explained by carbocation stability.
The two-step mechanism of electrophilic addition, curved arrows, why the more stable carbocation wins (Markovnikov's rule), and the bromonium ion in bromine addition.
1859–1927
Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) showed that salts, acids and bases split into ions in water, gave us the Arrhenius equation and won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
1871–1937
Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) named alpha and beta radiation, showed that radioactive elements transform into others and discovered the atomic nucleus. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1908.
1867–1934
Marie Curie (1867–1934) discovered polonium and radium, coined the word radioactivity and won Nobel Prizes in both physics (1903) and chemistry (1911).