Robert Bunsen Google Doodle: March 31, 2011 Chemist's Birthday

The March 31, 2011 Google Doodle Is a Tribute To Chemist Robert Bunsen.

As anyone who watches Breaking Bad can tell you, chemists can be pretty bad-ass. After all, knowledge of chemistry can help a meek school teacher Walter White hold his own against psychotic drug lords.

With that in mind, few chemists were more bad-ass than Robert Bunsen, so much so that Google dedicated today's Google doodle to the late German chemist.

March 31, 2011 would have been Robert Bunsen's 200th birthday. As a tribute, Google put up a Google doodle that looks like a chemistry set.

Who is Robert Bunsen?

Odds are the name will ring a bell since he created the Bunsen Burner, a common piece of lab equipment found in just about every high school chemistry class on earth.

But Robert Bunsen was about much more than the Bunsen burner.

He was an innovator in the field of spectrum analysis.

Along with Gustav Kirchhoff, Bunsen developed the spectroscope, which helped them discover two alkali metals, cesium and rubidium.

Like Walter White, Bunsen was a great teacher. He attracted and inspired future chemists like Julius Lothar Meyer and Dmitri Mendeleev.

And if he wasn't enough cool already, the Muppet Bunsen Honeydew is named after him. You can't get more bad-ass than that.

Photos

Bunsen Honeydew

see larger image

uploaded by NowPublic Staff