Stanislao Cannizzaro (redirected from Canizzaro)

Cannizzaro, Stanislao 

Born July 13, 1826, in Palermo; died May 10, 1910, in Rome. Italian chemist. One of the originators of the atom-molecular theory.

Cannizzaro studied medicine at the universities of Palermo and Pisa. In 1845 he began working with the Italian chemist R. Piria (1814–65). Cannizzaro participated in a national uprising in Sicily, emigrating to France (1849) after its suppression. In Paris he collaborated with the French chemist F. Cloëz (1817–83); in 1851 they successfully prepared cyanamide by the reaction CNC1 + NH₃ = CNNH₂ + HC1. Upon his return to Italy, Cannizzaro was appointed professor of chemistry at the National College in Alessandria (1851), where he discovered the Cannizzaro reaction. He was a professor at the universities of Genoa (from 1856), Palermo (from 1861), and Rome (1871–1910); it was in Rome that he began studying santonin and its derivatives (from 1873).

Cannizzaro’s historical contributions to science include the refinement of atomic weight values for certain elements (metals in particular) on the basis of Dulong and Petit’s law and the demonstration of the universal application of Avogadro’s principle to determining the molecular weights of simple and complex substances in the vaporous state. He rigorously differentiated the concepts of “atom,” “equivalent” (combining weight), and “molecule.” Cannizzaro’s views were reflected in his published works (1858) and expounded in his address to the International Congress of Chemists held at Karlsruhe in 1860. They received universal recognition in subsequent years.

WORKS

Scritti vari e lettere inedite. Rome, 1926.
In Russian translation:
Obzor razvitiia poniatiia ob atome, chastitse i ekvivalente i razlichnykh sistem formul Kiev, 1873.
O predelakh i o forme teoreticheskogo prepodavaniia khimii. Kiev, 1873.

REFERENCES

Mendeleev, D. I. “Khimicheskii kongress v Karlsrue.” Soch., vol. 15. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.
Giua, M. Istoriia khimii. Moscow, 1966. (Translated from Italian.)
Bykov, G. V., and V. A. Kritsman. Stanislao Kannitstsaro. Ocherk zhizni i deiatel’nosti. Moscow, 1972. (Includes a bibliography of Cannizzaro’s works.)

S. A. POGODIN