Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
David Lewis gives a talk entitled “Two centuries of aromatic hydrocarbons” to mark the bicentenary of the discovery of benzene by Michael Faraday in 1825. This talk was given on 15 March 2025. In a paper in the Philosophical Transactions read before the Royal Society on June 16, 1825, Michael Faraday (1791-1867) announced the discovery of a new hydrocarbon that he called "bicarburet of hydrogen," which we now know as benzene. Faraday's achievement was reassessed in 1968 by the analytical chemist and pioneer of capillary chromatography, Rudolf Ernst Kaiser (1930-2021), who reported that the mixture that Faraday started from had over 300 components at the 100 ppm or higher level. Faraday's hydrocarbon remains a fascinating molecule whose lack of reactivity despite its molecular formula that clearly defines it as being highly unsaturated. The concept of aromaticity and methods for assessing it have remained a topic of interest for chemists and physicists alike. Faraday's discovery and its legacy will be discussed.
David Lewis gives a talk entitled “Two centuries of aromatic hydrocarbons” to mark the bicentenary of the discovery of benzene by Michael Faraday in 1825. This talk was given on 15 March 2025. In a paper in the Philosophical Transactions read before the Royal Society on June 16, 1825, Michael Faraday (1791-1867) announced the discovery of a new hydrocarbon that he called "bicarburet of hydrogen," which we now know as benzene. Faraday's achievement was reassessed in 1968 by the analytical chemist and pioneer of capillary chromatography, Rudolf Ernst Kaiser (1930-2021), who reported that the mixture that Faraday started from had over 300 components at the 100 ppm or higher level. Faraday's hydrocarbon remains a fascinating molecule whose lack of reactivity despite its molecular formula that clearly defines it as being highly unsaturated. The concept of aromaticity and methods for assessing it have remained a topic of interest for chemists and physicists alike. Faraday's discovery and its legacy will be discussed.
