Chemistry
- Peter Debye derives the T-cubed law for the low temperature heat capacity of a nonmetallic solid.
- Casimir Funk introduces the concept of vitamins.
- Frans, a German chemist working for Griesheim-Elektron, patents a means of producing vinyl chloride from acetylene and hydrogen chloride using mercuric chloride as a catalyst.
- Fritz Klatte discovers polyvinyl acetate, and applies for a patent for its preparation from acetylene gas although it is not successfully commercialized at this time.
- Wilbur Scoville devises the Scoville scale for measuring the heat of peppers.
- December 24 – Merck files patent applications for synthesis of the entactogenic drug MDMA, developed by Anton Köllisch.
Read more about this topic: 1912 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word chemistry:
“Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,—not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,—and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)