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[edit] Bond, electron bond

I've seen Lewis credited with the idea atoms join by electron bonds, in 1913. Can anybody confirm? Trekphiler 10:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I also have a problem with the 1902 date given in the beginning of the article. This article and others I've seen cite 1916 as the date of the theory, and it would make sense that it might have begun in 1913, rather than 1902. --Eliyahu S ^Talk 09:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

If you look up the original references you'll see that Lewis claims that he came up with some of these ideas in 1902, but didn't publish them until 1913 (or was it 1916)?. I think I saw a picture of one of his notebooks (I don't remember where), supposedly from 1902, which had drawings of his cubical atoms. --Itub 18:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Lewis was using dot's to represent electrons, in about 1900, and was lecturing to chemistry students at Harvard using these dots. The following diagram is dated from 1902:

His famous article, The Atom and The Molecule, was published in 1916. Berzelius, however, formulated one of the first electro-chemical theories of bonding in 1813. In 1874, using this model as a basis, in a paper entitled ‘On the Physical Units of Nature’, Irish physicist George Stoney postulated that in nature there exist fundamental units or quantities of electricity, which are independent of any particular body, and that exchanges of these electrical units account for chemical bonds:

“

For each chemical bond which is ruptured within an electrolyte a certain quantity of electricity traverses the electrolyte which is the same in all cases.

”

I hope that helps. The real history, of course, is much bigger. --Sadi Carnot 01:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)