Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert Newton Lewis (October 23, 1875-March 23, 1946) was a famous physical chemist.

Lewis was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the son of a Dartmouth-graduated lawyer/broker. He was a precocious child who learned to read at age three. His family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska when he was 9. At 13, he entered the preparatory school of the University of Nebraska, and continued to the University when he completed the preparatory school. After his sophomore year, he transferred to Harvard University where he got his B. A. in 1896 and his Ph. D. in 1899.

After his Ph. D., he stayed as an instructor for a year before taking a traveling fellowship, studying under the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig and Walter Nernst at Göttingen. He then returned to Harvard as an instructor for three more years, and in 1904 left to become superintendent of weights and measures for the Bureau of Science of the Philippine Isnands in Manila. The next year he returned to Cambridge when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appointed him to a faculty position, and he had a chance to join a group of outstanding physical chemists under the direction of Arthur Amos Noyes. He quickly rose in rank, becoming assistant professor in 1907, associate professor on 1908, and full professor in 1911. He left MIT to become professor of physical chemistry and dean of the college of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley in 1912.

On June 21, 1912, he married Mary Hinckley ZSheldon, daughter of a Harvard professor of Romance languages. They had two sons, both of whom became chemistry professors, and a daughter.

In 1916, he formulated the idea that a covalent bond consisted of a shared pair of electrons. In 1923, he formulated the electron-pair theory of acid-base reactions. In the so-called Lewis theory of acids and bases, an acid is an electron-pair acceptor and a base is an electron-pair donor.

Lewis was the first to isolate deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and produced the first sample of pure deuterium oxide (heavy water) in 1933.