Stanislao Cannizzaro Quest for Knowledge

Throughout history, the curiosities of obtaining knowledge of facts that show the operation of general laws have resulted into the improvements of today’s society. Such curiosity of chemical reactions coiled in the minds of John Dalton in the atomic theory, Rosalind Franklin with genetics, and most importantly Antoine Lavoisier the father of modern chemistry. All who, worked extensively to acquire the understanding that fascinated them most, chemistry. Another chemist who sought after the same knowledge was Stanislao Cannizzaro. Studying organic chemistry Cannizzaro explained how certain elements lacked the hydrogen atom in what is know n as the Cannizzaro Reaction.

Being the youngest of ten children, Cannizzaro was born in Palermo, Sicily where his father was a magistrate and minister of police and his mother descended from Sicilian aristocracy, Anna di Benedetto. Receiving a classical education in the Palermo schools, he enrolled at the University of Palermo to study medicine. As a medical student Cannizzaro became interested in chemistry and accepted a job at the University of Pisa as a laboratory assistant for Raffaela Piria, a leading Italian chemist. Assisting with investigations of Salicin and glucosides, Cannizzaro studied chemistry for the next two years. The summer break of 1847 in an attempt to return to Palermo to finish studies a revolutionary outbreak against the Bourbons ruptured and Cannizzaro became an artillery officer. When the rebellion failed and being condemned to death Cannizzaro fled to Marseilles and soon to Paris, where he researched cyanamide and successfully synthesized cyanamide.

After a few years of exile, Cannizzaro returned to Italy and in 1851 accepted a position as professor of physics, che...

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...ed Cannizzaro’s ideas. The acceptance of Avogadro’s hypothesis led Meyer and Dimitri Mendeleev to devise the periodic law in late 1860.

After the congress Cannizzaro made his way back to Palermo, where he became a council member in the new government by Garibaldi. A year later he returned to the University of Palermo as a professor of inorganic and organic chemistry. Creating a “top” research center, Palermo became the leading center for chemical studies. A decade later, he moved to Rome serving as a senator and vice president of the Italian Senate. In 1856 Cannizzaro married Henrietta Withers and had one son. During his last years Cannizzaro received honors and awards including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1891. When he died he died in 1910, he impacted, provided, and left behind essential service in creating the modern science of chemistry.