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Born on this day
Odd Hassel
Odd Hassel was a Norwegian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate.
20th week in year
17 May 2024

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Odd Hassel17.5.1897

Wikipedia (10 Apr 2013, 12:28)
Odd Hassel (17 May 1897 – 11 May 1981) was a Norwegian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate.


Personal life


Odd Hassel was born on May 17, 1897 in Christiana (now called Oslo), Norway. His father Ernst Hassel died while Hassel was only eight years old. Hassel had a twin brother, Leif. This left his mother, Mathilde Klaveness to raise Hassel and his three brothers and one sister. Hassel attended the University of Oslo in 1915 to study chemistry. In the beginning of World War II, Germany invaded Norway and sent the staff of the University of Oslo, including Hassel, to an internment camp. Hassel continued his research until his freedom in 1944. After his retirement in 1964, Hassel continued his research. It was not until 1969 that the Nobel Prize in chemistry with Barton for their work in the 1940s. By this time, Hassel had already received the Fridtjof Nansen Award of Sciences as well as the Guldberg-Waage medal from the Norwegian Chemical Society in 1964. Hassel died on May 15, 1981.


Scientific Concept and Principles

Odd Hassel was a Norwegian physical chemist who established the three-dimensionality of molecular geometry. While an instructor at the University of Oslo in 1925, he focused his research on ring-shaped carbon molecules which he suspected filled three dimensions instead of two, the common belief of the time. By using the number of bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms, Hassel demonstrated the impossibility of the molecules existing on only one plane. In 1930, by means of X-ray crystallography, Hassel proved the three-dimensionality of the molecules. This discovery became increasingly important because it incited Derek H.R. Barton’s realization of the correspondence between molecular function and structure. This discovery is still applicable today because it has been proved multiple times that molecules are three-dimensional. This discovery is very important in the study of the shape of orbitals.




(photo source www.nobelprize.org)
   
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