1884 - Friedrich Bergius was born.

Nobel Prize Foundation

Bergius was a German chemist who shares the 1931 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Carl Bosch for their work using high pressure methods. Bergius developed a method to hydrogenate coal dust under high pressure to create gasoline and lubricating oils known as the Bergius process.

1755 - Fausto D'Elhuyar was born.

Fausto D'Elhuyar was a Spanish mineralogist who, together with his brother Juan José D'Elhuyar, isolated the element tungsten from wolfram ore. Carl Scheele had discovered tungsten two years earlier in the form of tungstic acid, but did not separate the tungsten metal from the acid. The D'Elhuyar brothers reduced the acid through charcoal and removed the metal.

1705 - Guillaume Amontons died.

Amontons was a French physicist and instrument maker who introduced three laws of static friction. He discovered friction was directly proportional to the applied load, independent of the area of contact and independent of the sliding velocity. He also developed scientific instruments such as an air thermometer that relied on the increased volume of a gas, rather than a liquid like mercury. He used this to determine the change in temperature was proportional to a change in pressure.