Wilhelm Ostwald

Wilhelm Friedrich Ostwald was born on 2 September 1853, a Baltic German who would help forge an entire field. Alongside Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Walther Nernst, and Svante Arrhenius, he founded physical chemistry, applying rigorous quantitative methods to reactions, equilibria, and catalysis. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry came in 1909 for that work: catalysis, chemical equilibria, reaction velocities. Then in 1906 he retired from academic life and pivoted hard - into philosophy, art, politics, making what observers called significant contributions to each. He has been described as a polymath. He died on 4 April 1932, having spent more than two decades outside the discipline that made his name.