• Question: whos the best scientist in chemical creations so far ? opinionated

    Asked by c2412 to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 8 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      Difficult question. I can say who I think the worst creator of chemicals was though. He was a chemist called Thomas Midgely Jr, who invented CFCs and the lead additives for petrol. Obviously, he didn’t know he would end up destroying the ozone layer and poisoning people with leaded petrol.

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Well there are certainly many many scientists who could take this title. One of the best stories of inventing chemicals is surely penicillin by Alexander Fleming. He left a load of his work on the shelf and then went away on holiday, when he came back he found that some of the bacteria had been killed by penicillin!

    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      Can you imagine a world without coke?

      No! In that case…I’m gonna go with pharmacist John Pemberton, who invented coke by mistake!

      While trying to find a cure for headaches, he mixed together a bunch of ingredients bottled it up and sold it in pharmacies. It was only 8 years later that it became a popular drink!

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 17 Mar 2013:

      Probably Dmitri Mendeleev who started the Periodic Table. He noticed a load of gaps and correctly predicted elements yet to be found and what their properties were. He also made a chemical called pyrocollodion, which is an alternative to gunpowder.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Mar 2013:

      HJ Heinz, who invented ketchup and without whom we would not be able to have tasty beans on toast.

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