The origins of heterogeneous catalysis by platinum: Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner's contributions.

A number of examples of what Jöns Jacob Berzelius was later (1835) to call catalysis, have been known from antiquity. One of the most prominent of these, dating from the early eighteenth century, was the action of platinum black on hydrogen observed in 1823 by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (1780-1849), Professor of Chemistry and Technology at the Universität Jena (1810-1849), who is regarded as the discoverer of platinum catalysis. His startling discovery led to his invention of the widely used pneumatic gas lighter (Döbereinersches Feuerzeug) and was cited by Berzelius in his formulation of the concept of catalysis.