15 Facts About Vilhelms Ostvalds

1. Vilhelms Ostvalds received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his scientific contributions to the fields of catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities.

2. Vilhelms Ostvalds made significant contributions to each of these fields.

3. Vilhelms Ostvalds worked in the laboratory of Carl Schmidt, along with his contemporary Johann Lemberg.

4. Vilhelms Ostvalds supported himself for a time by teaching mathematics and science at a Dorpat high school.

5. Vilhelms Ostvalds served as the first "exchange professor" at Harvard University in 1904 and 1905.

6. Vilhelms Ostvalds discovered that solids do not necessarily crystallize in their most thermodynamically stable form but instead sometimes crystallize preferentially in other forms dependent on the relative rates of crystallization of each polymorphic form.

7. Vilhelms Ostvalds defined one mole as the molecular weight of a substance in units of mass grams.

8. Vilhelms Ostvalds explained in a conversation with Arnold Sommerfeld that he was convinced by Jean Perrin's experiments on Brownian Motion.

9. Vilhelms Ostvalds created the journal Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften in 1889, of which more than 250 volumes have been published.

10. Vilhelms Ostvalds's published work, which includes numerous philosophical writings, contains about forty thousand pages.

11. Vilhelms Ostvalds wrote several publications in the field, such as his Malerbriefe and Die Farbenfibel (The Color Primer, 1916).

12. Vilhelms Ostvalds was a member of a Committee of the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language.

13. Vilhelms Ostvalds became an honorary member of scientific societies in Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States.

14. Vilhelms Ostvalds lived at the country estate for most of the remainder of his life.

15. Vilhelms Ostvalds is mentioned in Italo Svevo's 1923 novel, La coscienza di Zeno, translated as Zeno's Conscience.