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Johann Rudolf Glauber ( 1604 (?); March 10 1670), a German-Dutch alchemist and chemist. Some historians of science have described him as one of the first chemical engineers. His discovery of sodium sulfate in 1625 led to the compound being named after him ("Glauber's salt").
Born in Karlstadt am Main, he received no formal education and later he moved to the Netherlands and settled in Amsterdam (1655).
His work and experiments resulted in discoveries of several analytic methods and he was the first to produce hydrochloric acid. He also established the manufacture of nitric acid in 1648, by heating potassium nitrate with concentrated sulphuric acid.
The Chemical Garden (or Silica Garden) was first observed and described by Glauber in 1646. In its original form, the Chemical Garden involved the introduction of ferrous chloride (FeCl2) crystals into a solution of potassium silicate (K2SiO3, water glass).
External Sources
References
- Herman Skolnik in W. F. Furter (ed) (1982) A Century of Chemical Engineering ISBN 0-306-40895-3 page 230
- Johann Rudolf Glauber, Furni Novi Philosophici. Amsterdam, 1646