Russian-German chemist who is considered one of the principle founders of physical chemistry. He translated Gibbs's works into German in 1892, and founded the first journal of physical chemistry with van't Hoff. He presented the modern view of catalysis, namely that catalysts do not alter the reaction mechanism, but merely lower the reaction barrier, for which he was awarded to Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1909. He developed a theory of solutions based on ionic dissociation and an analogy between gases and chemical solutions similar to Arrhenius's. He also believed that energy was the single real entity in nature.