Talk:Jöns Jacob Berzelius

Wrong number of stable isotopes

There are 6 stable isotopes. They are Se-74, Se-76, Se-77, Se-78, Se-80 and Se-82. --Anon

What are you talking about? This isn't the talk for selenium. You are mistaken BTW; Se-82 has a half life of 1.08 E20 y. Granted that is absurdly long but it still means that the isotope is radioactive (proton decay is another matter). --mav

Renaming to Jöns Jakob Berzelius

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica [1], MSN Encarta [2], and Encyclopaedia.com [3] encyclopaedias, his name is Jöns Jakob Berzelius not Jöns Jacob Berzelius. I am planning on renaming this article as such in-line with those other encyclopaedias. Any objections? Megan1967 04:53, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've also just noted Library of Congress catalogue also lists his publications as Jöns Jakob Berzelius not Jöns Jacob Berzelius [4]. Megan1967 05:01, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we could still provide a little info on the spelling of the name to clarify confusion? ~ 67.42.203.155 11:58, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Has it importance?

In a minor edit for fixing a bad link, I noticed subscript in water formula was bolded, but I couldn't see that. Before I noticed I can see it in other browser, I erased it.

Now I checked that bolded is correctly displayed on big font sizes and in Internet Explorer browser. Anyways, has it importance? I don't know about its displaying on other browsers.

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
12:09, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Catalysis

A very important term that Berzelius used for the first time is "catalysis". It's not mentioned here, neither he is mentioned in the article about catalysis in wikipedia. I attach the link for Berzelius in the enciclopaedia britannica: [5] --193.147.219.225 14:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone fixed that. Thanks someone! Said: Rursus (☻) 15:11, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Wrong template

The article have references and citations, the citations just need to be fixed into the text by the <ref> mechanism. The template {{Citation style}} should IMHO be used instead. So i go. Said: Rursus (☻) 15:11, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Jacob versus Jakob

This article should be moved to Jöns Jacob Berzelius, but this will require administrator work. The Jacob version is definitely the spelling of his own era. Swedish encyclopediae of the late 19th century and early 20th century "reformed" the spelling of many older Swedes; thus Jacob became Jakob, Carl became Karl and so on. Since several decades (mid-20th century) Swedish sources always favor the original spelling to be kept. It is understandable that this "reformed" (read: corrupted) spelling appears in many online sources, since the early 20th century encylopediae, such as Nordisk Familjebok, are now in the public domain, while the mid- and late-20th century sources are still copyrighted. Compare the spelling of the Swedish article: sv:Jöns Jacob Berzelius. Tomas e (talk) 16:39, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The Swedish spelling is of little intrest if there is a common english spelling of his name. Wiki tries always to use the most common spelling in english speaking countries even it differes from the right and or iriginal spelling, so is there a chance that Jacob or Jakob is more common in english publications? --Stone (talk) 13:41, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

(Jöns) Jacob Berzelius tombstone.

Is there such a thing as a "spelling in English" of a person's name which doesn't need to be translitterated, or is there just misspelling? There has definitely been a move away from changing the spelling of names in English. You don't see the (mis)spellings Adolph Hitler or Herman Goering used as primary names in this encyclopedia, but could very well have seen them in a printed English-language encyclopedia 50 years ago. That's why we have redirects from probable misspellings but place articles under their correct name. Tomas e (talk) 20:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Rudolf Mössbauer and Franz Josef Strauss are misspellings in my view, but they are the oficial titles for the articles. This is slowly going back, but I think there is no consensus if we are already there and use the right names if they use latin letters.--Stone (talk) 20:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Someone at svwp has been "stalking" some Stockholm burial grounds lately - in broad daylight, so no need for worry :-). I couldn't avoid showing you how his name is spelled on his tombstone. Tomas e (talk) 15:32, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Tomas e that the article title should use the correct Swedish spelling of Jacob, since it uses only English letters. The alternate form Jakob may have been imported from German to English in the past; it can be mentioned once in the opening paragraph. As for Mössbauer and Strauss, they are not really analogous since the German letter β is not part of the English alphabet and must be transliterated as ss, but there is no such problem for Jacob. Dirac66 (talk) 21:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Historians (like myself) generally use the form of the name used by the protagonist himself, hence in this case Jacob Berzelius. And by the way, he never used his first name Jöns; he went consistently by the name "Jacob Berzelius", and this is the name on the title pages of all of his books (see also the gravestone image). I would suggest not changing the title of the article, and adding a note about the non-use of Jöns.129.22.72.125 (talk) 16:34, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

The previous comment is fully endorsed. I agree not to change the current title but suggest to add a note, perhaps in the introductory paragraph, of something like "by himself and his contemporary society consistently refered to as Jacob Berzelius. Jöns was a silent firstname, a tradition that is common in Sweden." Axel Fredrik (talk) 22:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Following IP 195.187.108.60's querying of the IPA, I've posted a request for help from a Swedish speaker at sv:Jöns_Jacob_Berzelius#Pronunciation. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:36, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I have recieved the following from user Roufu on the Swedish wiki:

I am a native Swede. I grew up close to a street named after him, I have taught courses in the history of chemistry but I don't know the IPA phonetic alphabet. I will try to explain the ambiguities in the pronunciation with words.

• The letter z has no independent funcction in Swedish. It may be seen as an alternative way of writing the letter s. I believe the spelling Berselius has also been used by members of his family.
• The stress is on the second syllable where the vowel is long. Swedish long vowels are about 3 times as long as short ones. I believe the placing of the stress follows standard latin rules of pronunciation.
• The letter combination rz (= rs) is pronounced differntly by different people, depending on regional origin. All variations that I describe are percived as correct by native Swedes. The basic problem is the sound r, which may either be pronounced in the standard French way or in the Spanish or Scottish way. People who use the French r tend to pronounce rs as two separate sounds, those who use the Spanish r, tend to pronounce rs as the English sound sh (as in ship). The street in my childhood neighborhood is usually pronounced the latter way. It is written Berzeliigatan with proper latin genitive. Few people know the origin of the name.
• The common rs contraction to sh goes with the assunption that rs belong to the same syllable, like in the word fors, pronounced fosh. In the name Berzelius one may well think of the letters as belonging to different syllables, Ber-ze-li-us and pronounce r and z (=s) sepatarately, even by soeakers who otherwise contract rs to sh.

The outcome of all this is that it does not really matter how one pronounces the name as long as the stress is put in the right place. Roufu (diskussion) 28 augusti 2015 kl. 12.31 (CEST)

On the basis of his last bullet point I will remove the "dubious - discuss" tag. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:55, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

According to the above, ɹ is still at least not mainstream. 176.221.120.32 (talk) 00:18, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Discussion on Vitalism

Is there a need to have a digression on Vitalism on this page? The section should be more about Berzelius's work on the theory of vitalism rather that a discussion of other scientist's work on the theory. Cole Phinney (talk) 16:50, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Section on Work in Electro Chemistry

I am going to add a section on his work in electro-chemistryCole Phinney (talk) 05:36, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Section on Published works

Berzelius was well known for his textbook of Chemistry and there is no mention of it on the article yet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cole Phinney (talk • contribs) 20:35, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Discovery of Elements

This article could be more useful if it provided information of how Berzelius discovered each element that he did discover. Cole Phinney (talk) 16:22, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

In that case, would you mind doing it? Needs a decent source to be quoted, but otherwise the principal challenge is finding someone who understands the context and the discoveries themselves sufficiently to avoid writing obvious nonsense. Sounds like the person with the necessary knowledge might be you. Success Charles01 (talk) 17:10, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

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He didn't discover thorium?

Current version https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=J%C3%B6ns_Jacob_Berzelius&oldid=1243383071#Discovery_of_elements says:

Berzelius is credited with discovering the chemical elements cerium and selenium and with being the first to isolate silicon, thorium, titanium and zirconium.

but all other sources I can see say he did, including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium and one of the nearby citations to: https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/90/thorium

And if he didn't, who did? Were there any earlier reasons to believe the element existed?

Presumably they mean Morten Thrane Esmark who found the mineral in 1828 and then sent it to Berzelius who identified the new element.

But I think its fair to say that Berzelius discovered the element, as it is the person who chemically characterizes a new element that is generally the "discoverer".

Cirosantilli2 (talk) 10:55, 12 September 2024 (UTC)