Bunsen, Robert (1811-1899), German chemist

1 undated letter to an unknown recipient signed 'B' and mounted - pencil annotation on mount referring to "Robert Bunsen".

19th century

1 file (1 piece)

Purchased from Puttick and Simpson, May 1930 (acc.62824).

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was born at Göttingen in 1811, 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, Bunsen enrolled at Göttingen in 1828 to study chemistry, mineralogy and mathematics. In 1831 he obtained a PhD and spent 1832 and 1833 traveling in Germany, France, and Austria. In 1833 Bunsen became a lecturer at Göttingen, and eventually he was promoted to full professorship in 1841whilst at University of Marburg. As newly appointed professor at Heidelberg, and with his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, Bunsen developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use and by 1855 they had perfected it. In 1859 Bunsen created the Bunsen cell battery and joined Gustav Kirchhoff to study emission spectra of heated elements, a research area called spectrum analysis - The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and Kirchhoff.

When Bunsen retired at the age of 78, he shifted his work solely to geology and mineralogy, an interest which he had pursued throughout his career. He died in Heidelberg, aged 88.