Abstract
Antoine Lavoisier, the pioneering French chemist who (together with Joseph Priestley in England) identified oxygen as an element and gave it its name, in 1789 concluded that quartz was probably a compound with an as-yet undiscovered but presumably extremely common element. That was also the year in which the French Revolution broke out. Five years later, the Jacobins accused Lavoisier of offences against the people and cut off his head, thereby nearly cutting off the new chemistry. It was not until 1824 that Jöns Berzelius in Sweden succeeded in confirming Lavoisier’s speculation by isolating silicon. Argument at once broke out among the scientific elite as to whether the newly found element was a metal or an insulator. It took more than a century to settle that disagreement decisively: As so often, when all-or-nothing alternatives are fiercely argued, the truth turned out to be neither all nor nothing.
R. W. Cahn is deceased.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
F. Hoyle, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 106, 343 (1946)
F. Hoyle, E.M. Burbidge, G.R. Burbidge, W. Fowler, Rev. Mod. Phys. 29, 547 (1957)
K. Lark-Horowitz, in Proc. Conf. Semiconducting Materials, Reading, UK (Butterworth, London, 1951), p. 47
J.G. Wilkes, in Processing of Semiconductors, ed. by K.A. Jackson. Materials Science and Technology (ed. by R.W. Cahn et al.), vol. 16 (VCH, Weinheim, 1996), p. 19
T.D. Yensen, Elec. J. (March 1921)
J.L. Walter, in The Sorby Centennial Symposium on the History of Metallurgy, ed. by C.S. Smith (Gordon and Breach, New York, 1965), p. 519
F. Seitz, N.G. Einspruch, Electronic Genie: The Tangled History of Silicon (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1998)
A.H. Wilson, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 133, 458 (1931)
A.H. Wilson, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 134, 277 (1931)
A.H. Wilson, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 371, 39 (1980)
A.H. Wilson, Semi-conductors and Metals (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1939)
J.H. Scaff, Metall. Trans. 1, 561 (1970)
S. Mahajan, K.S. Sree Harsha, Principles of Growth and Processing of Semiconductors (McGraw-Hill, Boston, 1999)
S. Mahajan, Prog. Mat. Sci. 49, 487 (2004)
M. Riordan, L. Hoddeson, Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age (W.W. Norton, New York, 1997)
S.M. Spearing, Acta Mater. 48, 179 (2000)
A.P. London, A.A. Ayón, A.H. Epstein, S.M. Spearing, T. Harrison, Y. Peles, J.L. Kerrebrrock, Sens. Actuators A 92, 351 (2001)
K.-S. Chen, S.M. Spearing, N.N. Nemeth, AIAA J. 39, 720 (2001)
K.-S. Chen, A. Ayon, S.M. Spearing, J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 83, 1476 (2000)
W. Parrish, Acta Cryst. 13, 838 (1960)
M. Hart, R.J. Cernik, W. Parrish, H. Toraya, J. Appl. Cryst. 23, 286 (1990)
U. Bonse, M. Hart, Appl. Phys. Lett. 6, 155 (1965)
M. Hart, Brit. J. Appl. Phys. (J. Phys. D) Ser. 21, 1405 (1968)
I. Robinson, Phys. World 17, 31 (May 2004)
I.M. Mills, P.J. Mohr, T.J. Quinn, B.N. Tayloer, E.R. Williams, Metrologia 42, 71 (2005)
R.S. Davis, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 363, 2249 (2005)
P. Becker, H. Bettin, H.-U. Danzebrink, M. Gläser, U. Kuetgens, A. Nicolaus, D. Schiel, P. de Bièvre, S. Valkiers, P. Taylor, Metrologia 40, 271 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cahn, R.W. (2009). Silicon: Child and Progenitor of Revolution. In: Huff, H.R. (eds) Into the Nano Era. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 106. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74559-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74559-4_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74558-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74559-4
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)