Speech on history of benzene
Answers
Benzene (C6H6) is known as the most famous aromatic (cyclic) hydrocarbons. It could be famous because of its structure which is cyclic or due to its stability compared to others hydrocarbons (benzene is more stable than other hydrocarbons). As it is categorized as organic compaund, benzene can be treated by common organic reaction, e.g. nucleofilic attact, substitution reaction, dehidrogenation, and so on. It is also hydrophobic (Greek: water afraid) molecule but less hydrophobic than other organics.
Currently, chemists know very well about this molecule but benzene itself has a nice history how people try to explain this molecule. Since it was found for the first time, benzene was known has un-ussual structure. This molecule was discoverd by Michael Faraday (1791-1867) in 1825. Farady is more famous for his insights into electricity and magnetism but he was the first person who identify benzene and determine its composition as containing six carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms. But he confused, how it connected each others. At that time, benzene was known to be unsaturated hydrocarbon which has doube or triple bond but unfortunately, it was not reactive to hydrogen. Hydrogenation reaction is common way to check the un-saturity degree of organic compound to distinguish the bond types that the molecule has.
It needs time to obtain a correct structure of benzene. The first people who proposed the benzene structure were Scottish chemist Archibald Scott Couper (1831-1892) and the German chemist Josef Loschmidt (1821-1895) but without any empirical (scientifical) evidence.