Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (31 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and with Gustav Kirchhoff he discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861). Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, he was a pioneer in photochemistry, and he did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen burner, an i...
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Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (31 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and with Gustav Kirchhoff he discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861). Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, he was a pioneer in photochemistry, and he did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use. The Bunsen-Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and his colleague, Gustav Kirchhoff.
Bunsen was born in Göttingen, Kingdom of Hanover, Germany. He was the youngest of four sons of the University of Göttingen's chief librarian and professor of modern philology, Christian Bunsen (1770–1837). After attending school in Holzminden, Robert Bunsen studied chemistry. During this time, he met Friedrich Runge (who discovered aniline and in 1819 isolated caffeine), Justus von Liebig in...
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