1861 good year for Solvay

As I'm sure you know, the Otago Daily Times recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, and so in this, the final column of the year, it seems appropriate to look at what was happening in chemistry in the first year of its publication, 1861.

The elements rubidium and thallium were both discovered that year - neither are what one would call particularly useful, but the latter was often used in rat poison, and was famously implicated in a veritable orgy of poisonings (46 reported cases, 10 deaths) in Sydney during 1952-53. Frederick Hopkins, discoverer of vitamins and future Nobel laureate was born in 1861, the same year Aleksandr Butlerov presented his seminal ideas of chemical structure which now underpin all of chemistry.

However, the big chemical news of 1861 belonged to a 22-year-old Belgian factory worker who had to shelve his plans to study engineering at university owing to an attack of pleurisy. His name was Ernest Solvay, and in 1861 he patented "the industrial manufacture of carbonate of soda by means of sea salt, ammonia and carbonic acid", a procedure which soon came to be known as the Solvay process. Carbonate of soda was, in the past, also called soda ash and washing soda, but is better known these days to chemists as sodium carbonate, Na2CO3. It is used extensively in the manufacture of glass, paper, detergents and soap.

The Solvay process quickly became the method of choice for the production of sodium carbonate, as it was much cheaper and far less polluting than the method that preceded it. As a result, by the end of the 1870s, Solvay had over 20 factories in France, Germany, England, the United States, Austria and Russia churning out tonnes of the material. Not surprisingly, this made Solvay rather rich and, like his near contemporary, Alfred Nobel, he turned to philanthropy, endowing institutes of physiology and social science, a school of commerce and a workman's educational centre at the Free University of Brussels.

However, Solvay's lasting fame came as a result of his scientific inquisitiveness - he had a longstanding interest in both gravitation and the structure of matter, and a meeting with the soon-to-be Nobel laureate Walther Nernst in 1910 set in course a train of events that led to the organisation of conferences charged with addressing topical questions of chemistry and physics. As a result, the first Solvay conference, whose theme was "The Theory of Radiation and the Quanta", was held in Brussels in 1911.

And it would have just been another conference were it not for Solvay's insistence that only the finest scientists of the day be invited. The list of participants is quite extraordinary; of the 24 attendees, Einstein, Rutherford, Curie, Nernst, Planck, Wien, Lorentz, Perrin and Kamerlingh Onnes were already, or would go on to become, Nobel laureates. This quality of participants reached its zenith in the legendary fifth Solvay conference of 1927 on "Electrons and Photons", where 17 of the 29 attendees were, or would become, Nobel laureates.

Solvay died in 1922, but Solvay conferences continue to this day - indeed, the centenary conference was held in October. Such events are, not surprisingly, by invitation only. I'm not holding my breath.

And that, dear readers, brings to an end the International Year of Chemistry. In 2012, we have the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, and the International Year of Co-operatives to look forward to. Oh, and according to the Mayans, the world is going to end.

• Dr Blackman is an associate professor in the chemistry department at the University of Otago.