Swedish chemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1926 for
his studies in the chemistry of colloids and for his invention of the
ultracentrifuge, an invaluable aid in those and subsequent studies.
Svedberg's early research was on colloids, in which particles too small
to be resolved by ordinary light microscopes are dispersed throughout
water or some other substance. The particles in colloid solutions are
so small that the jostling of the surrounding water molecules keeps
them from settling out in accord with gravity. To better study the particles,
Svedberg used centrifugal force to mimic the effects of gravity on them.
His first ultracentrifuge, completed in 1924, was capable of generating
a centrifugal force up to 5,000 times the force of gravity. Later versions
generated hundreds of thousands of times the force of gravity. Svedberg
found that the size and weight of the particles determined their rate
of settling out, or sedimentation, and he used this fact to measure
their size. With an ultracentrifuge, Svedberg went on to determine precisely
the molecular weights of highly complex proteins such as hemoglobin.
In later years he made studies in nuclear chemistry, contributed to
the improvement of the cyclotron, and helped his student Arne Tiselius
in the development of the use of electrophoresis to separate and analyze
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