Svedberg's colloidal sol patentIn 1909, Swedish chemist Theodor Svedberg filed to patent his method of producing colloidal sols or gels, simultaneously in Great Britain, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. By 1926, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with disperse systems. In colloidal systems, extremely fine particles are dispersed in a continuous medium, in which they remain suspended indefinitely. In molecular-disperse systems, the particles are large molecules like proteins or haemoglobin. Svedberg invented an ultracentrifuge to investigate them. At 40,000 revolutions/min, the particles were redistributed towards the periphery of the motion. Analysis of photographs of the distribution yielded the molecular weight of the particles.« |
