Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert N. Lewis

Gilbert Newton Lewis ForMemRS (October 23, 1875 – March 23, 1946) was an American physical chemist known for the discovery of the covalent bond (see his Lewis dot structures and his 1916 paper "The Atom and the Molecule"), his purification of heavy water, his reformulation of chemical thermodynamics in a mathematically rigorous manner accessible to ordinary chemists, his theory of Lewis acids and bases, and his photochemical experiments. In 1926, Lewis coined the term "photon" for the smallest unit of radiant energy. He was a brother in Alpha Chi Sigma, the professional chemistry fraternity, and for most of his long professorial career, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Although he never won the award he was nominated for a Nobel Prize 35 times; more than any other person.