March 23rd
1867 Charles L. Parsons, researcher on beryllium (Be, 4); obtained federal charter for ACS; helped establish Petroleum research Fund, was born.
1881 Hermann Staudinger, researcher on the chemistry of macromolecular substances; Nobel Prize (1953) for his discoveries in the field of macromolecular chemistry, was born.
1895 William Crookes identified new gas (isolated from air by William Ramsay) as helium that had been discovered in the Sun 27 years earlier by Norman Lockyer.
1962 Neil Bartlett made the first noble gas compound, XePtF6.