Svante August Arrhenius, pioneering chemist

Arrhenius won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1903 for his work on the dissociation of molecules into ions; in a second major contribution, he put the law of mass action onto a firm footing with the introduction of the "Arrhenius factor" in the rate equations. This gave the dependence of the rate constants under changes of temperature, and roughly agrees with many experiments. Some modifications to this law have been suggested by the data. In statistical dynamics, a distinct modification of Arrhenius's law is necessary in the simplest, hard-core, model. This was suggested in my paper on cotransport.

The ratio of the forward and backward reaction rates, as derived from the Arrhenius formula, predicts an exponential law for the dependence on temperature. This prediction of the law agrees with experiment very accurately over ranges of temperature of several orders of magnitude. Physicists will recognise this factor as the Boltzmann factor of a system obeying detailed balance. Ostwald, a Nobel Laureate (1909) in Chemistry for his work on catalysis, was a great admirer of Arrhenius, about whom more can be found here.