ARRHENIUS, SVANTE AUGUSTO. — Born in Wijk near Uppsala (Sweden) in 1859, died in Stockholm in 1927.
In 1883 he presented the hypothesis now bearing his name in the thesis *Researches on the Galvanic Conductivity*, published in Stockholm the following year. The idea was not new among the physicists and chemists of his time, and the Italian Bartoli must be considered the most deserving to be remembered as a precursor. Yet rightly A. is regarded as the founder of the theory of electrolytic dissociation because he considered the chemical activity of the molecule dissolved in water (v.) as a consequence of dissociation into ions and deduced its consequences. He also wrote treatises: *Theories of Chemistry*, *Electrochemistry*, *Chemistry and Modern Life* (published in Swedish in Copenhagen). He received the Nobel Prize in 1903.
He also occupied himself with astronomy, cosmology, and biology, and wrote: *The Destinies of the Worlds* (Italian trans. by A. Levi, Milan 1909), *Earth and Universe* (1926), in which writings the materialist concept emerges “that the universe in its essence has always been as it is now.”