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Born
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6 September 1766(1766-09-06)
Eaglesfield, Cumberland, England
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Died
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27 July 1844 (aged 77)
Manchester, England
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Notable students
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James Prescott Joule
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Known for
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Atomic Theory, Law of Multiple Proportions, Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, Daltonism
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Influences
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John Gough
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* He orally presented an important series of papers, entitled "Experimental Essays".
* Six elements appear in this table, namely hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, and phosphorus, with the atom of hydrogen conventionally assumed to weigh 1.
* The extension of this idea to substances in general necessarily led him to the law of multiple proportions, and the comparison with experiment brilliantly confirmed his deduction that chemical combination takes place between particles of different weights.
* Five main points of Dalton's Atomic Theory
- Elements are made of tiny particles called atoms.
- All atoms of a given element are identical.
- The atoms of a given element are different from those of any other element; the atoms of different elements can be distinguished from one another by their respective relative weights.
- Atoms of one element can combine with atoms of other elements to form chemical compounds; a given compound always has the same relative numbers of types of atoms.
- Atoms cannot be created, divided into smaller particles, nor destroyed in the chemical process; a chemical reaction simply changes the way atoms are grouped together.
* Dalton suffered a minor stroke in 1837, and a second one in 1838 left him with a speech impediment, though he remained able to do experiments
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