Johann Josef Loschmidt
1821–1895 (age 74)
Biography
Johann Josef Loschmidt (15 March 1821 – 8 July 1895), better known as Josef Loschmidt, was an Austrian scientist who performed ground-breaking work in chemistry, physics (thermodynamics, optics, electrodynamics), and crystal forms.
Born in Karlsbad, a town in the Austrian Empire (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic), Loschmidt became professor of physical chemistry at the University of Vienna in 1868.
He had two early mentors. The first was Bohemian priest Adalbert Czech, who persuaded Loschmidt's parents to send young Josef to high school in the Piarist monastery in Schlackenwerth and, in 1837, to advanced high-school classes in Prague.
This was followed by two years of philosophy and mathematics at Prague's Charles University, where Loschmidt met his second important mentor. This was philosophy professor Franz Serafin Exner, whose eyesight was failing, and who asked Loschmidt to be his personal reader. Exner was known for his innovative school reforms, which included promoting mathematics and science as important subjects. He suggested to Loschmidt, who became a close personal friend, that he apply mathematics to psychological phenomena. In the process of doing this, he became a very able mathematician.
The era, when Loschmidt gradually developed his ideas on molecular structures, was to be a notable epoch in science. It was the time when the Kinetic Theory of Gases was being developed.
His 1861 booklet, Chemische Studien ("chemical studies"), proposed two-dimensional representations for over 300 molecules in a style remarkably similar to that used by modern chemists. Among these were aromatic molecules such as benzene (C6H6), and related triazines. Loschmidt symbolized the benzene nucleus by a large circle, which he said was to indicate the yet-undetermined structure of the compound. Some have argued, however, that he intended this as the suggestion of a cyclical structure, four years before that of Kekulé, who is better known and is generally credited with the discovery of benzene's cyclic structure.