Some of the Major Events in the Field of

Science, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering 

Ø  1635:  John Winthrop Jr., opens America's first chemical plant in Boston. They produce saltpeter (used in gunpowder) and alum(used in tanning).

Ø  1644:  Evangelista Torricelli devises the barometer.

Ø  1647:  Blaise Pascal determines the pressure of air.

Ø  1662:  Robert Boyle found that the volume occupied by the same sample of any gas at constant temperature is inversely proportional to the pressure. This statement is known as Boyle's law.

Ø  1683:  Antoni von Leewenhoek discovers bacteria.

Ø  1687: Isaac Newton publishes his "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Matematica". The whole development of modern science begins with this great book. Newton set the foundations of mechanics, the theory of gravitation, a theory of light.

Ø  1720:  Newcomen's steam engine comes into general use.

Ø  1722: Reamur publishes the guarded secret of steel-makers; that steel is Iron containing just the right amount of carbon.

Ø  1750: Classic British Industrial Revolution begins(often said to last until 1830s, however in many ways it continues to this day).

Ø  1760:  James Watt improves on the Newcomen Engine.

Ø  1766:  Henry Cavendish discovers "inflammable air"(Hydrogen), which he concluded to be a combination of water and phlogiston(oxygen), since its combustion yielded water.

Ø  1770: John Priestley discovers oxygen and showed that it is consumed by animals and produced by the plants.

Ø  1772: Daniel Rutherford describes "residual air", the first published description of Nitrogen.

Ø  1772: Joseph Priestley and Jan Ingenhousz investigate photosynthesis.

Ø  1775: Antoine Lavoisier shows that fire is due to the exothermic reaction between combustible substances and oxygen. He named a gas discovered by Cavendish, that burned to produce water, Hydrogen(Greek, water producer). Also demonstrated that CO₂, Nitric acid, and Sulfuric acid contained oxygen.

Ø  1780: Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre Laplace publish their Memoire on Heat, in which they reach the conclusion that respiration is a form of combustion.

Ø  1783: Lazaro Spallanzani performs experiments demonstrating that digestion is a chemical process rather than a mechanical grinding of the food.

Ø  1785: Charles de Coulomb measures the attractive and repulsive forces of electrically charged particles, and discovered that these forces are inversely proportional to the square of the distance.

Ø  1787: Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles studies the volume changes of gases with changes in temperature.

Ø  1787:  The U.S. Constitution is written.

Ø  1795: Alessandro Volta shows how to produce electricity by simply putting two different pieces of metal together, with liquid or damp cloth between them, and he thus produced the first electrical current battery.

Ø  1802:  Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac announces the ideal gas law.

Ø  1802: The E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company(Du Pont) is founded and builds a gunpowder factory along the banks of the Brandywine River near Wilmington, Delaware.

Ø  1804: Nicholas Theodore de Saussure publishes experiments on photosynthesis, and described the balanced equation of the process.

Ø  1806: Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Robiquet first isolated an amino acid, asparagine, from asparagus.

Ø  1807: Humprey Davy utilizes electric current to prepare metals from molecules such as; sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, strontium and barium.

Ø  1809: Nicolas Francois Appert, inventor and bacteriologist, demonstrates a procedure for preservation of foods by canning.

Ø  1810: Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac deduces the equations of alcoholic fermentation.

Ø  1811: Amadeo Avogadro demonstrates that equal volumes of all gases under the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules, and that a fixed number of molecules of any gas will weigh proportional to its molecular weight. Presently the accepted value for the Avogadro number is 6.023 x 10²³ molecules per gram-mol.

Ø  1824: Sadi Carnot publishes his Reflexions setting various outstanding principles that constitute the basis of actual Thermodynamics.

Ø  1828: Friederich Wohler synthesizes the first organic compound from inorganic compounds, preparing Urea by reacting Lead cyanate with ammonia.

Ø  1828:  Robert Brown first describes Brownian motion.

Ø  1831: Michael Faraday shows the relation between magnetism and electricity is dynamic. He showed that not only was magnetism equivalent to electricity in motion but also, conversely, electricity was magnetism in motion. Later, Clerk Maxwell summarized the electromagnetic theory.

Ø  1833: Jean Baptiste Boussingnault recommends the use of iodized salt to cure goiter.

Ø  1835: Jons Jacob Berzelius demonstrates that the hydrolysis of starch is catalyzed more efficiently by malt diastase than by sulfuric acid. He published the first general theory of chemical catalysis.

Ø  1837: Rene Dutrochet recognizes that chlorophyll was necessary for photosynthesis.

Ø  1838: US Congress passes act requiring boiler inspection and testing because of frequent steamboiler explosions.

Ø  1840: Publication of Justus von Liebig's Thierchemie united the field of chemistry and physiology. He pointed out that organic compounds in plants are synthesized from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while nitrogenous compounds are derived from precursors in the soil.

Ø  1842: Julius Robert Mayer enunciates the Law of Conservation of Energy (1st Law of Thermodynamics), after establishing the work equivalent of Heat.

Ø  1845: Herman von Helmoltz and Julius Robert Mayer formulate the Laws of Thermodynamics.

Ø  1845: Alfred Kolbe synthesizes acetic acid.

Ø  1846: Joule demonstrates the equivalence for various forms of energy (heat-electrical-mechanical).

Ø  1850: The first petroleum refinery consisting of a one-barrel still was built in Pittsburgh by Samuel Kier.

Ø  1853: Kerosene is extracted from petroleum.

Ø  1854: The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company becomes the first oil company in the US

Ø  1855: Benjamin Silliman, of New Haven, Connecticut, obtains valuable products by distilling petroleum. They include tar, naphthalene, gasoline, and various solvents.

Ø  1856: Bessemer devises a process to make cast steel on a large scale by blowing air through melted pig iron to burn the carbon and maintain the resulting steel melted.

Ø  1856: Seeking to make a substitute for quinine, the first artificial aniline coal tar dye is developed by William H. Perkin.

Ø  1858: Friederich August Kekule von Stradonitz proposes that carbon atoms can form chains.

Ø  1859: The first commercially successful US oil well is drilled by E.L. Drake near Titusville, Pennsylvania. This 70 foot well launches the petroleum industry.

Ø  1860: During the First International Congress of Chemistry in Karlsruhe, Canizzaro presented new methods determine atomic weights; Oxygen weight of 16 was adopted as measuring basis of element weights, thus setting Hydrogen's weight, the lightest known element, to approximately 1.

Ø  1860: Louis Pasteur germ theory of disease revolutionizes concepts of Medicine and public health.

Ø  1863: Ernest Solvay perfects his method for producing sodium bicarbonate.

Ø  1863: The British government passes the "Alkali Works Act" in an attempt to control environmental emissions.

Ø  1864: Ernst Seyler performed the first crystallization of a protein: hemoglobin.

Ø  1865: Friederich August Kekule devices a ring model for the structural formula of benzene.

Ø  1865: The first US petroleum pipeline is built from an oil field near Titusville, Pennsylvania to a nearby railroad.

Ø  1866: Dynamite is developed by Alfred Nobel.

Ø  1866: Celluloid is invented by a British entrepreneur named Alexander Parkes(The Father of Plastics).

Ø  1866: Ernst Heinrich Haekel hypothesizes that the nuclei of a cell transmits its hereditary information. He was the first using the term ‘ecology’ to describe the study of living organisms and their interactions with other organisms and with their environment.

Ø  1868: Jean Baptiste Boussingnault pointed out that plants require oxygen for the photosynthesis.

Ø  1869: Dmitri Mendelejeff published a chemical elements arrangement table. This is the basis of the well known periodic table.

Ø  1869: Celluloid was produced by John Hyatt in Albany, New York. The breakthrough came about because of a search for an ivory substitute that could be used to make billiard balls. Celluloid was the first synthetic plastic to receive wide commercial use.

Ø  1870: Justus von Liebeg proposed that all fermentations were chemical reactions rather than vital impulses.

Ø  1871: Johan Friederich Miescher isolated a substance which he called "nuclein" from the nuclei of white blood cells. This substance came to be known as nucleic acid.

Ø  1872: Carl Friederich, Wilhem Ludwig and Eduard Pfunger studied the gas exchange process in the blood and showed that oxidation occurs in the tissues rather than in the blood.

Ø  1873: Anton Schneider observed and described the behavior of nuclear filaments (chromosomes) during cell division, providing the first accurate description of the process of mitosis in animal cells.

Ø  1874: German graduate student Othmar Zeider discovers the chemical formula for DDT.

Ø  1875: Oscar Hertwig showed that the head of the spermatozoon becomes a pronucleus and combines with the female pronucleus as the zygote nucleus, thus establishing the concept that fertilization is the conjugation of two cells.

Ø  1876: Nikolaus August Otto designed the first four stroke piston engine. It is nicknamed the "Silent Otto".

Ø  1876: The American Chemical Society (ACS) was formed.

Ø  1877: Wilhelm Friederich Kuhne proposed the term Enzyme(meaning ‘in yeast’) and distinguished enzymes from the microorganisms that produce them.

Ø  1878: Josiah Willard Gibbs developed the theory of Chemical Thermodynamics introducing fundamental equations and relations to calculate multiphase equilibrium, the phase rule, and the free energy concept. His work remained unknown until 1883, when Wilhelm Ostwald discovered his work and translated it to German.

Ø  1879: Saccharin was discovered by Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist at Johns Hopkins University. The calorie free sweetener is 300 times stronger than sucrose and has been sold commercially since about 1900.

Ø  1880: Andrew Carnegie develops his first, large, steel furnace.

Ø  1880: George Davis proposes a "Society of Chemical Engineers" in England.

Ø  1881: Louis Pasteur gave a public demonstration of the effectiveness of his Anthrax vaccine.

Ø  1883: Osborne Reynolds published his paper on the Reynolds' Number, a dimensionless quantity which characterizes laminar and turbulent flow by relating kinetic(or inertial) forces to viscous forces within a fluid.

Ø  1884: Patent granted for chemical-coagulation filtration process.

Ø  1884: The Solvay process is transferred to the United States and the Solvay Process Co. begins making soda ash in Syracuse.

Ø  1884: Svante Arrhenius and Friederich Ostwald independently defined acids as substances which release hydrogen ions when dissolved in water.

Ø  1884: Christian Joachim Gram invented his staining method for classification of bacteria.

Ø  1884: Viscose Rayon is invented by the French chemist Hilaire Chardonnet.

Ø  1885: The gasoline automobile is developed by Karl Benz. Before this, gasoline was an unwanted fraction of petroleum which caused many house fires because of its tendency to explode when placed in Kerosene lamps.

Ø  1886: The first modern Oil Tanker, the Gluckauf, was built for Germany by England.

Ø  1887: August Weismann elaborated a theory of chromosome behavior during cell division and fertilization predicting the occurrence of meiosis.

Ø  1887: Emil Fischer elaborated the structural patterns of proteins.

Ø  1888: Heinrich Hertz performed the first experiments with a receptor to ‘hear’ herzian radio waves.

Ø  1889: Francis Galton formulated the law of ancestral inheritance, a statistical description of the relative contribution to heredity made by ancestors.

Ø  1890: Theodor Boveri and Jean Louis Guignard established the numerical equality of paternal and maternal chromosomes at fertilization.

Ø  1890: Emil Adolf von Behring discovered antibodies.

Ø  1891: Heinrich Wilhelm Weldiger proposed the Neuron theory of the nervous system.

Ø  1892: Diesel develops his internal combustion engine.

Ø  1893: Sorel published ‘La rectification de alcool’ were he developed and applied the mathematical theory of the rectifying column for binary mixtures. William Ostwald proved that enzymes are catalysts.

Ø  1894: George Oliver and Eduard Albert Sharpey-Schaeffer first demonstrated the action of a specific hormone; the effect of an extract of adrenal gland on blood vessels and muscle contraction, upon injection in normal animals it produced a striking elevation of blood pressure.

Ø  1895: The German physicist Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen discovered a new kind of radiation working with the vacuum tube discharge. This radiation was called X-rays.

Ø  1895: Linde develops his process for liquefying air.

Ø  1897: Badishe produces synthetic Indigo on a commercial scale in Germany.

Ø  1899: The first bottle of Aspirin goes on sale to the public.

Ø  1899: Max Plank introduced the concept that light and all other kinds of electromagnetic radiation, which were considered as continuous trains of waves, actually consist of individual energy packages with well defined amounts of energy quanta, proportional to its vibration frequency.

Ø  1900: John Herreshoff, of the Nichols Chemical Co., develops the first contact method for sulfuric acid production in the United States.

Ø  1901: Oil Drilling begins in Persia.

Ø  1905: Einstein has his ‘miracle year’ as he formulates the Special Theory of Relativity, establishes the Law of Mass-Energy Equivalence, creates the Brownian Theory of Motion, and formulates the Photon Theory of Light.

Ø  1906: Ludwig Boltzman dies. He has the equation: ‘S=k ln(W)’ carved on his gravestone in Vienna. Today it is known as the Boltzman Principle, and provides a statistical relationship between entropy(S) and the number of ways a system can be configured(W).

Ø  1908: Cellophane is discovered by a Swiss chemist named Jacques Brandenberger.

Ø  1908: New Jersey starts chlorinating water supply.

Ø  1908: Svante Arrhenius argues that the greenhouse effect from coal and petroleum use is warming the globe.

Ø  1908: Dr. Leo Baekeland (‘The Father of the Plastics Industry’) discovers Bakelite in his laboratory in Yonkers, N.Y.

Ø  1910: Bakelite production begins at the General Bakelite Company. The plastic finds widespread use in electric insulation, electric plugs and sockets, clock bases, iron handles, and jewelry.

Ø  1910: Synthetic Ammonia is first produced by the Haber Process in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

Ø  1910: A US Rayon plant is constructed by the American Viscose Co.

Ø  1911: Sir Ernest Rutherford proposes his theory concerning the atomic nucleus.

Ø  1912: Wilson's cloud chamber allows the detection of protons and electrons.

Ø  1913: The Standard Oil Co.(Indiana) begins the thermal cracking of petroleum in "Burton Stills".

Ø  1913: Niels Bohr proposes his ‘solar system’ model of the atom.

Ø  1915: The unit operations concept is articulated by Arthur Little.

Ø  1915: Toxic gas(Chlorine Gas) is used in World War-I at the battles. Fritz Haber, primarily known for his ammonia production process, supervises these deadly ‘experiments’. Later, his wife pleads with him to stop his work concerning poison gases. After he refuses she commits suicide.

Ø  1915: The Corning Glass Works begins marketing Pyrex glass.

Ø  1917: A full-sized plant, producing nitric acid from ammonia, is built by the Chemical Construction Co.

Ø  1918: Fritz Haber receives the Nobel Prize for his work on Ammonia synthesis. However, the award is highly protested because of his prominent role in developing and delivering poison gas in World War-I. Ironically, Haber is forced to leave his beloved Germany in 1933 because he was part Jewish.

Ø  1918: Acetone was produced for the British in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Ø  1920's: Cellulose acetate, acrylics(Lucite & Plexiglas), and polystyrene can finally be produced in large quantities.

Ø  1920: The 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages, goes into effect. Many cases of blindness and death result as people mistake wood alcohol(methanol) for ethanol.

Ø  1920: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) starts an independent Department of Chemical Engineering.

Ø  1920: Ponchon and Savarit developed and presented the famous Enthalpy-Concentration diagram useful to solve distillations calculations.

Ø  1920: The Standard Oil Co.(New Jersey) produces Isopropyl Alcohol, the first commercial petrochemical.

Ø  1921: A 4,500 metric ton stockpile of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfated exploded at a chemical plant in Oppau, Germany. The blast and subsequent fire killed 600, injured 1500, and left 7000 people homeless.

Ø  1922: Thomas Midgley uses Tetraethyl lead as an antiknock additive in gasoline.

Ø  1922: Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin develop a tuberculosis vaccine, BCG.

Ø  1922: The first human diabetes patient is injected with insulin. Mass production of this ‘wonder drug’ soon follows.

Ø  1923: Louis de Broglie demonstrated that radiation has corpuscular properties, and that matter particles such as electrons present condolatory wave characteristics.

Ø  1925: The AIChE begins accreditation of chemical engineering programs.

Ø  1925: Rubber antioxidants begin to be used.

Ø  1925: McCabe and Thiele present a graphical method for computing the number of equilibrium plates required in a fractionating column for binary mixtures.

Ø  1926: Du Pont and Commercial Solvents begin synthetic methanol production in the US

Ø  1927: Hermann Miller used X-rays to cause artificial gene mutations in Drosophila.

Ø  1929: Alexander Fleming observes the effect Penicillin has on bacteria. The breakthrough occurred when he returned to his laboratory after a four week vacation. An improperly sealed bacteria culture had been accidentally contaminated by a number of molds and yeast. One of the molds had killed the bacteria in the culture.

Ø  1930: The Wisconsin duo of Hougen & Watson stress the importance of thermodynamics in Chemical Engineering Education.

Ø  1930 & 40s: Michigan's Katz, Brown, White, Kurata, Standing, & Sliepcevich help lay down some foundations in phase equilibria, heat transfer, momentum transfer, and mass transfer.

Ø  1930 & 1940s: Systematic analysis of chemical reactors begun by; Damkohler in Germany, Van Heerden in Holland, and Danckwerts and Denbigh in England. They explore mass transfer, temperature variations, flow patterns, and multiple steady states.

Ø  1931: Neoprene synthetic rubber was produced by Du Pont.

Ø  1933: The Imperial Chemical Industries in England discover Polyethylene.

Ø  1933: Du Pont begins production of Rayon tire cord fabrics.

Ø  1934: Perry's first edition of the Chemical Engineers Handbook is published.

Ø  1935: Wallace H. Carothers, of Du Pont, discovers Nylon.

Ø  1936: Rohm & Haas begins marketing Methyl Methacrylate plastics (PMMA).

Ø  1936: The Houdry Process is used in the Catalytic Cracking of Petroleum.

Ø  1937: Polystyrene is offered to consumers in the US by Dow Chemical. It finds uses in radios, clock cases, electrical equipment, and wall tiles.

Ø  1939: Enrico Fermi, Otto Hahn, F. Strassman, Lisa Meitner, and Otto Frish discover Nuclear Fission.

Ø  1940: Polyethylene(used in electrical insulation and food packaging), silicones(lubricants, protective coatings, and high-temperature electronic insulation), and epoxy(a very strong adhesive) were developed.

Ø  1940: Standard Oil Co.(Indiana) developed Catalytic Reforming to produce higher octane gasoline and create toluene for TNT. Higher octane gasoline helped the American and British fighters outperform their German counterparts.

Ø  1940: First tire from synthetic rubber produced in US

Ø  1941: Styrene-Butadiene Rubber first produced in the US

Ø  1942: Polyester resins introduced.

Ø  1942: Enrico Fermi, and a team of scientists, operated the first man-made nuclear reactor under a football field at the University of Chicago. A cadmium control rod was suspended over the pile with a rope. Should something have gone wrong, a scientist was to cut the rope with an ax, thereby dropping the rod into the reactor, hopefully solving the problem.

Ø  1943: DDT, a powerful pesticide, first produced in the US

Ø  1944: Teflon, Tetrafluoroethelene resins, marketed by Du Pont.

Ø  1944: Selman Waksman discovers streptomycin, the first effective anti-tuberculous drug.

Ø  1945: The US ends World War-II by detonating the Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima, Japan.

Ø  1945: After World War-II, the US broke Germany's enormous I.G. Farben into; BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst.

Ø  1947: A barge, the Grandcamp, loaded with fertilizer grade Ammonium Nitrate catches fire and explodes destroying a nearby city and killing 576 in what would later be known as the ‘Texas City Disaster’.

Ø  1947: The formation of Hydrocarbons from synthetic gas by the Fischer-Tropish Process.

Ø  1947: The first off shore oil is drilled.

Ø  1948: A deadly smog settled over the small steel mill town of Donora, PA. The noxious air killed 19 and caused thousands to become ill.

Ø  1948 : Muller awarded Nobel Prize for inventing DDT(dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).

Ø  1950 & 1960s : Minnesota's mathematical marvel of Amundson & Aris stress the importance of mathematical modeling in Chemical Reactor Engineering. Their work helps encourage greater mathematical competence in Chemical Engineering Education.

Ø  1950 & 1960s: Wisconsin's triumvirate of Bird, Stewart, & Lightfoot reveal the unifying concepts of mass, momentum, and energy transport. Their textbook, ‘Transport Phenomenon’ continues to be a phenomenon in Chemical Engineering Education.

Ø  1950: Benzene produced from petroleum.

Ø  1951: The first Fusion Bomb is tested.

Ø  1952: Du Pont introduces Mylar polyester film.

Ø  1953: Production of soap exceeded by synthetic detergents.

Ø  1953: Francis Crick solved the three-dimensional structure of DNA molecule disclosed by discovered in 1950 by Erwin Chargaff.

Ø  1954: Polyisoprene rubber developed.

Ø  1955: General Electric produces synthetic diamond.

Ø  1957: Windscale graphite nuclear reactor burns for 42 hours in England. Releases I-131. Residents curtail milk consumption for safety reasons.

Ø  1957: General Electric develops polycarbonate plastics.

Ø  1959: The computer control of chemical processes gains credibility.

Ø  1959: A large scale hydrogen plant, to produce rocket fuel, is completed by Air Products.

Ø  1961: William McBride, an Australian obstetrician, discovers that thalidomide, a mourning sickness drug, causes birth defects.

Ø  1962: Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring", presents an emotional plea for protecting human health and the environment from chemical pesticides.

Ø  1965: Bottles made from polyvinyl chloride gain market share.

Ø  1965: NutraSweet is discovered by a researcher, Mr. James Schlatter, at the G.D. Searle & Co. The calorie free sugar replacer is 200 times sweeter than common sucrose.

Ø  1966: First attempt to control organic solvent emissions made by Los Angeles' Rule 66.

Ø  1968: Consumption of man-made fibers tops natural fibers in US.

Ø  1969: The horribly polluted Cuyahoga River, running through Cleveland, actually caught on fire.

Ø  1970's: America's heavy dependence on foreign oil results in an Energy Crisis as the Arabs stop shipment to countries which supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli Wars.

Ø  1970: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is formed. It consists of 6,000 employees and has an annual budget of $1.3 billion.

Ø  1970: Congress passes the ‘Clean Air Act’ establishing national air quality standards.

Ø  1972: Congress passes the ‘Clean Water Act’ to confront water pollution.

Ø  1973: Stanley Cohen & Herbert Boyer perform the first experiment in Genetic Engineering.

Ø  1974: Cyclohexan vapor from ruptured makeshift bypass pipe explodes killing 28 workers in Flixborough, England, prompting legislation for risk studies in British chemical plants.

Ø  1970s: Toxic releases including the Kepone tragedy at Hopewell, VA; the PCB contamination of the Hudson River; and the PBB poisoning of cows in Michigan keep environment issues in the headlines.

Ø  1975: Catalytic converters are introduced in many automobiles to meet emissions standards established by the US government.

Ø  1975: Cable fire at Browns Ferry nuclear reactor in Alabama almost leads to disaster. It was caused by an electrician who used a candle to check for air leaks below the nuclear plant's control room.

Ø  1975: Du Pont recognizes the contributions of Nathaniel C. Wyeth. He was responsible for introducing the plastic soda bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which quickly replaced their glass predecessors.

Ø  1975: McDonald's fast food chain starts using Polystyrene to package its hamburgers.

Ø  1976: Congress passes the ‘Toxic Substances Control Act’ regulating toxic chemicals.

Ø  1976: The US National Academy of Sciences reports that chlorofluorocarbons(Freons) can deplete the Ozone Layer.

Ø  1976: The US bans the use of chloroform in drugs and cosmetics.

Ø  1977: The FDA moves to ban Saccharin, a calorie free sweetener, because it has been found to cause cancer in rats.

Ø  1977: Raymond Damadian builds his first Magnetic Resonance Imager(MRI) used to generate 3-D images of the human body using the principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR).

Ø  1978: Chlorofluorcarbons (Freons) are banned as spray propellants in the US because of fears over the Ozone Layer.

Ø  1978: The US Government begins limiting the amount of lead permitted in gasoline. The action is taken to prevent deterioration of the platinum catalysts in catalytic converters, not to protect the public's safety.

Ø  1979: No one is injured, but many are terrified, by a nuclear reactor incident at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.

Ø  1979: Genetic Engineering succeeds in synthesizing human insulin.

Ø  1970s: Love Canal(in New York) and the Valley of Drums(10000 leaking hazardous waste drums near West Point, KY) keep environmental issues in the news and are described as ‘ticking time bombs’.

Ø  1980: The US Supreme Court rules that General Electric can Patent a microbe used for oil cleanup.

Ø  1980: The US Government bans the sale of lead based paints.

Ø  1980: The Superfund, containing $1.6 billion, is formed to be used by the EPA in cleaning up pollution sites.

Ø  1981: Chemical Process Simulation software is released for the PC(Personal computer). Soon packages like DESIGN-II, ASPEN, SIMSCI(PROII), HYSIM & CHEMCAD start appearing on engineering desktops.

Ø  1984: An accidental toxic gas release by Union Carbide kills over 2000 and disables 10000 in Bhopal, India.

Ø  1985: Low petroleum prices lead to the cancellation of the US Government sponsored ‘Synfuels’ project, designed to develop alternative energy sources based on coal or oil shales.

Ø  1986: Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor-IV explodes, releasing large amounts of radiation near Kiev, USSR.

Ø  1987: Japan's ‘Nipon Zeon’ company develops a plastic with memory. At low temperatures it can be bent and twisted, however when heated above 37 degrees Celsius it returns to its initial shape.

Ø  1988: A Scanning Tunneling Microscope produces the first picture of a Benzene Ring.

Ø  1988: North Sea oil platform explodes prompting England to require risk assessments in oil industry.

Ø  1988: McDonald's fast food chain stops using the ‘clamshell’ to package its hamburgers because of fears over the CFC's used in manufacturing Polystyrene.

Ø  1989: The Human Genome Project, designed to map all the genes in a human being, is launched.

Ø  1993: New York's "World Trade Center" is bombed by terrorists. The explosive was created by a 26-year-old chemical engineer educated at Rutgers University.

Ø  1995: The Shinri Kyo religious group uses Sarin nerve gas in the deadly Tokyo subway attack.

Ø  1995: A bomb made from Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil destroys the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Ø  1996: Dolly, a female sheep, becomes the first mammal to be cloned from an adult mammal's cells. This incredible work was carried out at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, and its announcement sparked a rash of discussion and legislation concerning the morality of cloning human beings.

Ø  1996: Olestra, a fat-free fat replacer, is approved for use in salted snacks by the FDA after 10 years of deliberation. Olestra is a novel lipid made from sucrose and soybean oil. With up to 8 fatty acids attached to the sucrose molecule, instead of the 3 fatty acids typically found in fat, enzymes are unable to break down Olestra. The Procter & Gamble company has been studying the safety of Olestra for nearly 30 years.

Ø  1996: Troll offshore platform begins collecting natural gas off the Norwegian coast. With 369 meters tall(most submerged) and 656,000 tons capacity it is one of the worlds largest structures.