Who discovered the molecule?
History of molecular theory
The modern concept of molecules can be traced back towards pre-scientific and Greek philosophers such as Leucippus and Democritus who argued that all the universe is composed of atoms and voids. Circa 450 BC Empedocles imagined fundamental elements (fire (), earth (), air (), and water ()) and "forces" of attraction and repulsion allowing the elements to interact. Prior to this, Heraclitus had claimed that fire or change was fundamental to our existence, created through the combination of opposite properties.[1] In the Timaeus, Plato, following Pythagoras, considered mathematical entities such as number, point, line and triangle as the fundamental building blocks or elements of this ephemeral world, and considered the four elements of fire, air, water and earth as states of substances through which the true mathematical principles or elements would pass.[2] A fifth element, the incorruptible quintessence aether, was considered to be the fundamental building block of the heavenly bodies. The viewpoint of Leucippus and Empedocles, along with the aether, was accepted by Aristotle and passed to medieval and renaissance Europe. A modern conceptualization of molecules began to develop in the 19th century along with experimental evidence for pure chemical elements and how individual atoms of different chemical substances such as hydrogen and oxygen can combine to form chemically stable molecules such as water molecules.
Richard Müller (chemist)
Richard Gustav Müller (17 July 1903 – 7 July 1999) was a German chemist. He and Eugene G. Rochow independently discovered the direct process of organosilicon compounds in 1941. That synthesis, also known as the "Müller-Rochow process" is the copper-catalysed reaction of chloromethane with silicon. Müller was awarded the National Prize of East Germany in 1952 for his work.