Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (30see below March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use.

The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and Kirchhoff

Robert Bunsen was born in Göttingen in what is now the state of Lower Saxony in Germany, but was then in the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia; upon the defeat of Napoleon three years later it became the Kingdom of Hanover. Robert was the youngest of four sons of the University of Göttingen's chief librarian and professor of modern philology, Christian Bunsen (1770–1837). Sources disagree on Robert Bunsen's exact birth date. His parish register, as well as two curricula vitae, handwritten by Bunsen himself, support the claim that 30 March 1811 is Bunsen's true birth date; however, many later sources cite 31 March as the date.

According to his biographer Georg Lockemann, Bunsen himself celebrated his birthday on the 31st in his later years. Lockemann thought this was quite odd, for he regarded the 30th as the correct date.

After attending school in Holzminden, Bunsen matriculated at Göttingen in 1828 and studied chemistry with Friedrich Stromeyer as well as mineralogy with Johann Friedrich Ludwig Hausmann and mathematics with Carl Friedrich Gauss. After obtaining a Ph.D. in 1831, Bunsen spent 1832 and 1833 traveling in Germany, France, and Austria; Friedlieb Runge (who discovered aniline and in 1819 isolated caffeine), Justus von Liebig in Gießen, and Eilhard Mitscherlich in Bonn were among the many scientist he met on his journeys.
Bunsen was one of the most universally admired scientists of his generation. He was a master teacher, devoted to his students, and they were equally devoted to him. At a time of vigorous and often caustic scientific debates, Bunsen always conducted himself as a perfect gentleman, maintaining his distance from theoretical disputes. He much preferred to work quietly in his laboratory, regularly enriching his science with useful discoveries. As a matter of principle he never took out a patent. He never married.
(en.wikipedia.org)