Carl Friedrich Wenzel (February 26, 1793) was a German

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

and

metallurgist Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

who determined the reaction rates of various chemicals, establishing, for example, that the amount of metal that dissolves in an

acid In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a se ...

is proportional to the concentration of acid in the

solution Solution may refer to: * Solution (chemistry), a mixture where one substance is dissolved in another * Solution (equation), in mathematics ** Numerical solution, in numerical analysis, approximate solutions within specified error bounds * Solutio ...

. Thus he was the first person to give the notion of

equivalent weight In chemistry, equivalent weight (also known as gram equivalent) is the mass of one equivalent, that is the mass of a given substance which will combine with or displace a fixed quantity of another substance. The equivalent weight of an element i ...

and to publish a table of equivalent weights of acids and bases. Later

Jeremias Benjamin Richter Jeremias Benjamin Richter (; 10 March 1762 – 4 May 1807) was a German chemist. He was born at Hirschberg in Silesia, became a mining official at Breslau in 1794, and in 1800 was appointed assessor to the department of mines and chemist to the ...

produced a larger table of equivalent weights. Wenzel, whose first name is also spelled Karl, was born at

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

in 1740. Disliking his father's trade of

bookbinding Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, b ...

, for which he was intended, he left home in 1755, and after taking lessons in

surgery Surgery ''cheirourgikē'' (composed of χείρ, "hand", and ἔργον, "work"), via la, chirurgiae, meaning "hand work". is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a person to investigate or treat a pa ...

and chemistry at

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

, became a ship's surgeon in the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

service. In 1766, tired of sea-life, he went to study chemistry at

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, and afterwards devoted himself to metallurgy and assaying at his native place with much success. Thanks to that success, in 1780 Wenzel was appointed chemist to the

Freiberg Freiberg is a university and former mining town in Saxony, Germany. It is a so-called ''Große Kreisstadt'' (large county town) and the administrative centre of Mittelsachsen district. Its historic town centre has been placed under heritage c ...

foundries by the

elector of Saxony The Electorate of Saxony, also known as Electoral Saxony (German: or ), was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire from 1356–1806. It was centered around the cities of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. In the Golden Bull of 1356, Emperor Charles ...

. In 1785 he became assessor to the superintending board of the foundries, and in 1786 chemist to the porcelain works at Meissen. He died at Freiberg.

Works

* ''Recepttaschenbuch für das Gebiet der Kinderkrankheiten'' . Vol. 1/2 . Palm & Enke, Erlangen 1829-183
Digital edition
by the

University and State Library Düsseldorf The University and State Library Düsseldorf (german: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf, abbreviated ULB Düsseldorf) is a central service institution of Heinrich Heine University. Along with Bonn and Münster, it is also one of t ...

References

External links

* 1740 births 1793 deaths 19th-century German chemists German metallurgists Engineers from Dresden Physicians from Saxony Naval surgeons {{Germany-chemist-stub