July 27, 1844 – Death of John Dalton, naturalist, chemist, mathematician, meteorologist, and father of modern atomic theory

John Dalton was a British naturalist, chemist, mathematician, and meteorologist who stood out for establishing the atomic model and its table of relative weights, its system of symbols to represent atoms, as well as for having described color blindness (visual defect related to the perception of the colors he suffered from and which bears his name). He was interested in various topics whose works were followed by many others such as: rain, dew, the origin of springs, the color of the sky, steam, auxiliary verbs and participles of the English language, reflection and refraction of light. light etc

In addition, he is considered the father of modern atomic theory when describing the characteristics of chemical elements and the atoms that form it.

In 1803, he presented a first system of symbols and abbreviations for the names of the elements, becoming the first atomic graphic designer in history and expanding the list of 33 substances presented by Antoine Lavoisier to 36.

These symbols made it possible to convert the chemical language into a universal language. The drawback was that it did not have the approval of all chemists and it did not establish clear rules to expand the catalog of symbols in case of discovering new elements.

Currently, the system created by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1814 is used and is partially based on the one presented by Dalton. He simplified the system by organizing it into 47 letters that corresponded to the initials of the element's name in Latin, as was being done in other disciplines, and adding a second letter when there was a need to differentiate between two elements whose names began with the same letter. initial.

Berzelius's proposal was more widely accepted among chemists because it allowed the writing of chemical elements to be combined with ordinary text, avoiding many of the confusions generated by Dalton's symbols.

If you want to know more about this famous scientist, click on the following link: John Dalton