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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2002  > June  >
In the Classroom
H Is for Enthalpy, Thanks to Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and Alfred W. Porter
Irmgard K. Howard
Department of Chemistry, Houghton College, Houghton, NY 14744-0128
Cover
June 2002
Vol. 79 No. 6
p. 697
Abstract
During the 19th century the letter H sometimes represented heat, but the designation of enthalpy was placed into the scientific literature in 1909 by J. P. Dalton and credited by him to Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. In 1922 Alfred W. Porter formally proposed that H become the accepted symbol for Kamerlingh Onnes' enthalpy. During the 20th century, however, the genesis of that word became obscured by error, speculation, and use without attribution. This paper resolves current confusion about origins of the word enthalpy and its symbol H by examining their early uses in the literature.

See Letter re: this article.
More Information
*  Citation
 Howard, Irmgard K. J. Chem. Educ. 2002 79 697.
*  Keywords
 History / Philosophy; Physical Chemistry; Thermodynamics
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 May 17, 2002
March 16, 2005
Link to Letter added (April 2004).
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