The Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) was one of the first European scientists to accept John Dalton's atomic theory and to recognize the need for a new system of chemical symbols. He was a dominant figure in chemical science.

Jöns Jacob Berzelius, the son of a clergyman-schoolmaster, was born on Aug. 20, 1779, at Väversunda, Sweden. He studied for six years at the medical school at Uppsala and then studied chemistry at the Stockholm School of Surgery. In 1808 he was elected to the Swedish Academy of Science and was appointed its secretary in 1818. He married Elisabeth Poppius in 1835 and on that occasion was made a baron by the Swedish king, Charles XIV.

During the first decade of the nineteenth century, chemists were becoming aware that chemicals combined in definite proportions. This concept, sometimes known as Proust's law after the French chemist Joseph Louis...