Wilhelm Ostwald

Wilhelm Ostwald was a Baltic German chemist regarded, together with Jacobus van 't Hoff and Svante Arrhenius, as one of the founders of physical chemistry, the branch of chemistry that applies the methods of physics to chemical systems. Ostwald did extensive work on catalysis, the acceleration of chemical reactions by substances that are not themselves consumed, on chemical equilibrium, and on reaction rates, and he developed the Ostwald process, an industrial method for producing nitric acid by the catalytic oxidation of ammonia that remains in use. He formulated Ostwald's dilution law, describing how the degree of ionization of a weak electrolyte changes as it is diluted in solution, and he founded and long edited the influential Zeitschrift fur physikalische Chemie, one of the first journals dedicated specifically to the emerging field of physical chemistry. Ostwald received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 in recognition of his work on catalysis and for his investigations into the fundamental principles governing chemical equilibria and rates of reaction.