4 History of organic chemistry
4.1 Brief History
Gevela Jacob Berzelius, a physician by trade, first coined the term ”organic chemistry” in
1806 for the study of compounds derived from biological sources. Up through the early
19th century, naturalists and scientists observed critical differences between compounds
that were derived from living things and those that were not.
Chemists of the period noted that there seemed to be an essential yet inexplicable difference
between the properties of the two different types of compounds. Thevital force theory
, sometimes called ”vitalism” (vital means ”life force”), was therefore proposed, and widely
accepted, as a way to explain these differences, that a ”vital force” existed within organic
material but did not exist in any inorganic materials.
4.2 Synthesis of Urea.
Figure 2 Urea
Friedrich Wöhler is widely regarded as a pioneer in organic chemistry as a result of his
synthesizing of the biological compound urea (a component of urine in many animals)
utilizing what is now called ”the Wöhler synthesis.”
Wöhler mixed silver or lead cyanate with ammonium nitrate; this was supposed to yield
ammonium cyanate as a result of an exchange reaction, according to Berzelius’s dualism
theory. Wöhler, however, discovered that the end product of this reaction isnotammonium
cyanate (NH 4 OCN), an inorganic salt, but urea ((NH 2 ) 2 CO), a biological compound. (Fur-
thermore, heating ammonium cyanate turns it into urea.) Faced with this result, Berzelius
had to concede that (NH 2 ) 2 CO and NH 4 OCN wereisomers. Until this discovery in the year
1828, it was widely believed by chemists that organic substances could only be formed under
the influence of the ”vital force” in the bodies of animals and plants. Wöhler’s synthesis
dramatically proved that view to be false.