In 1771 Carl Wilhelm Scheele prepared the aqueous solution, hydrofluoric acid in large quantities, although hydrofluoric acid had been known in the glass industry before then.
French chemist Edmond Frémy (1814–1894) is credited with discovering hydrogen fluoride (HF) while trying to isolate fluorine.
Structure and reactions
The structure of chains of HF in crystalline hydrogen fluoride.
HF is diatomic in the gas-phase. As a liquid, HF forms relatively strong hydrogen bonds,
hence its relatively high boiling point. Solid HF consists of zig-zag
chains of HF molecules. The HF molecules, with a short covalent H–F bond
of 95 pm length, are linked to neighboring molecules by intermolecular
H–F distances of 155 pm.
Liquid HF also consists of chains of HF molecules, but the chains are
shorter, consisting on average of only five or six molecules.
Comparison with other hydrogen halides
Hydrogen
fluoride does not boil until 20 °C in contrast to the heavier hydrogen
halides, which boil between −85 °C (−120 °F) and −35 °C (−30 °F). This hydrogen bonding between HF molecules gives rise to high viscosity in the liquid phase and lower than expected pressure in the gas phase.
HF is miscible
with water (dissolves in any proportion). In contrast, the other
hydrogen halides exhibit limiting solubilities in water. Hydrogen
fluoride forms a monohydrate HF.H2O with melting point −40 °C (−40 °F), which is 44 °C (79 °F) above the melting point of pure HF.
HF and H2O similarities
Boiling points of the hydrogen halides (blue) and hydrogen chalcogenides (red): HF and H2O break trends.
Freezing point of HF/ H2O mixtures: arrows indicate compounds in the solid state.
Aqueous solutions of HF are called hydrofluoric acid.
When dilute, hydrofluoric acid behaves like a weak acid, unlike the
other hydrohalic acids, due to the formation of hydrogen-bonded ion pairs [H3O+·F−]. However concentrated solutions are strong acids, because bifluoride anions are predominant, instead of ion pairs. In liquid anhydrous HF, self-ionization occurs:
3 HF ⇌ H2F+ + HF−2
which forms an extremely acidic liquid (H0 = −15.1).
Hydrogen fluoride is typically produced by the reaction between sulfuric acid and pure grades of the mineral fluorite:
CaF2 + H2SO4 → 2 HF + CaSO4
About 20% of manufactured HF is a byproduct of fertilizer production, which generates hexafluorosilicic acid. This acid can be degraded to release HF thermally and by hydrolysis:
H2SiF6 → 2 HF + SiF4
SiF4 + 2 H2O → 4 HF + SiO2
Use
In general, anhydrous hydrogen fluoride is more common industrially than its aqueous solution, hydrofluoric acid. Its main uses, on a tonnage basis, are as a precursor to organofluorine compounds and a precursor to cryolite for the electrolysis of aluminium.
Precursor to organofluorine compounds
HF reacts with chlorocarbons to give fluorocarbons. An important application of this reaction is the production of tetrafluoroethylene (TFE), precursor to Teflon. Chloroform is fluorinated by HF to produce chlorodifluoromethane (R-22):
CHCl3 + 2 HF → CHClF2 + 2 HCl
Pyrolysis of chlorodifluoromethane (at 550-750 °C) yields TFE.
The electrowinning of aluminium
relies on the electrolysis of aluminium fluoride in molten cryolite.
Several kilograms of HF are consumed per ton of Al produced. Other
metal fluorides are produced using HF, including uranium tetrafluoride.
HF is the precursor to elemental fluorine, F2, by electrolysis of a solution of HF and potassium bifluoride. The potassium bifluoride is needed because anhydrous HF does not conduct electricity. Several thousand tons of F2 are produced annually.
Catalyst
HF serves as a catalyst in alkylation processes in refineries. It is used in the majority of the installed linear alkyl benzene production facilities in the world. The process involves dehydrogenation of n-paraffins to olefins, and subsequent reaction with benzene using HF as catalyst. For example, in oil refineries "alkylate", a component of high-octane petrol (gasoline), is generated in alkylation units, which combine C3 and C4 olefins and iso-butane.
Solvent
Hydrogen
fluoride is an excellent solvent. Reflecting the ability of HF to
participate in hydrogen bonding, even proteins and carbohydrates
dissolve in HF and can be recovered from it. In contrast, most
non-fluoride inorganic chemicals react with HF rather than dissolving.
Hydrogen fluoride is highly corrosive and a powerful contact poison. Exposure requires immediate medical attention. It can cause blindness by rapid destruction of the corneas. Breathing in hydrogen fluoride at high levels or in combination with skin contact can cause death from an irregular heartbeat or from pulmonary edema (fluid buildup in the lungs).
He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University,
which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor.
He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped
establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Wiesel was awarded various prestigious awards including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.Early life
The house in which Wiesel was born in Sighet
Eliezer Wiesel was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmației), Maramureș, in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. His parents were Sarah Feig and Shlomo Wiesel. At home, Wiesel's family spoke Yiddish most of the time, but also German, Hungarian, and Romanian. Wiesel's mother, Sarah, was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a VizhnitzHasid and farmer from the nearby village of Bocskó. Dodye was active and trusted within the community.
Wiesel's father, Shlomo, instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study the Torah. Wiesel said his father represented reason, while his mother Sarah promoted faith. Wiesel was instructed that his genealogy traced back to Rabbi Schlomo Yitzhaki (Rashi), and was a descendant of Rabbi Yeshayahu ben Abraham Horovitz ha-Levi.
Wiesel had three siblings—older sisters Beatrice and Hilda, and
younger sister Tzipora. Beatrice and Hilda survived the war, and were
reunited with Wiesel at a French orphanage. They eventually emigrated to
North America, with Beatrice moving to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Tzipora, Shlomo, and Sarah did not survive the Holocaust.
Imprisonment and orphaning during the Holocaust
Buchenwald concentration camp,
photo taken April 16, 1945, five days after liberation of the camp.
Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left, next
to the bunk post.
In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, thus extending the Holocaust into Northern Transylvania as well.
Wiesel was 15, and he, with his family, along with the rest of the
town's Jewish population, was placed in one of the two confinement
ghettos set up in Máramarossziget (Sighet), the town where he had been born and raised. In May 1944, the Hungarian authorities, under German pressure, began to deport the Jewish community to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where up to 90 percent of the people were murdered on arrival.
Immediately after they were sent to Auschwitz, his mother and his younger sister were murdered.
Wiesel and his father were selected to perform labor so long as they
remained able-bodied, after which they were to be murdered in the gas
chambers. Wiesel and his father were later deported to the concentration
camp at Buchenwald. Until that transfer, he admitted to Oprah Winfrey,
his primary motivation for trying to survive Auschwitz was knowing that
his father was still alive: "I knew that if I died, he would die." After they were taken to Buchenwald, his father died before the camp was liberated. In Night, Wiesel recalled the shame he felt when he heard his father being beaten and was unable to help.
Wiesel was tattooed with inmate number "A-7713" on his left arm. The camp was liberated by the U.S. Third Army on April 11, 1945, when they were just prepared to be evacuated from Buchenwald.
Post-war career as a writer
France
After World War II ended and Wiesel was freed, he joined a transport of 1,000 child survivors of Buchenwald to Ecouis, France, where the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) had established a rehabilitation center. Wiesel joined a smaller group of 90 to 100 boys from Orthodox homes who wanted kosher facilities and a higher level of religious observance; they were cared for in a home in Ambloy under the directorship of Judith Hemmendinger. This home was later moved to Taverny and operated until 1947.
By the time he was 19, he had begun working as a journalist, writing in French, while also teaching Hebrew and working as a choirmaster. He wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including Tsien in Kamf (in Yiddish).
In 1946, after learning of the Irgun's bombing of the King David Hotel
in Jerusalem, Wiesel made an unsuccessful attempt to join the
underground Zionist movement. In 1948, he translated articles from
Hebrew into Yiddish for Irgun periodicals, but never became a member of
the organization. In 1949, he traveled to Israel as a correspondent for the French newspaper L'arche. He then was hired as Paris correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, subsequently becoming its roaming international correspondent.
Excerpt from Night
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has
turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times
sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little
faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke
beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which
consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence
which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I
forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my
dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am
condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
For ten years after the war, Wiesel refused to write about or discuss
his experiences during the Holocaust. He began to reconsider his
decision after a meeting with the French author François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature who eventually became Wiesel's close friend. Mauriac was a devout Christian who had fought in the French Resistance during the war. He compared Wiesel to "Lazarus rising from the dead", and saw from Wiesel's tormented eyes, "the death of God in the soul of a child". Mauriac persuaded him to begin writing about his harrowing experiences.
Wiesel first wrote the 900-page memoir Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Remained Silent) in Yiddish, which was published in abridged form in Buenos Aires. Wiesel rewrote a shortened version of the manuscript in French, La Nuit, in 1955. It was translated into English as Night in 1960.
The book sold few copies after its initial publication, but still
attracted interest from reviewers, leading to television interviews with
Wiesel and meetings with writers such as Saul Bellow.
As its profile rose, Night was eventually translated into 30 languages with ten million copies sold in the United States. At one point film director Orson Welles
wanted to make it into a feature film, but Wiesel refused, feeling that
his memoir would lose its meaning if it were told without the silences
in between his words. Oprah Winfrey made it a spotlight selection for her book club in 2006.
United States
In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York as foreign correspondent for the Israel daily, Yediot Ahronot. In 1969, he married Austrian Marion Erster Rose, who also translated many of his books. They had one son, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, named after Wiesel's father.
Wiesel in 1987
In the U.S., he eventually wrote over 40 books, most of them non-fiction Holocaust literature,
and novels. As an author, he was awarded a number of literary prizes
and is considered among the most important in describing the Holocaust
from a highly personal perspective. As a result, some historians credited Wiesel with giving the term Holocaust its present meaning, although he did not feel that the word adequately described that historical event. In 1975, he co-founded the magazine Moment with writer Leonard Fein.
The 1979 book and play The Trial of God are said to have been based on his real-life Auschwitz experience of witnessing three Jews who, close to death, conduct a trial against God, under the accusation that He has been oppressive towards the Jewish people.
Wiesel also played a role in the initial success of The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
by endorsing it before it became known the book was fiction and, in the
sense that it was presented as all Kosinski's true experience, a hoax.
Wiesel published two volumes of memoirs. The first, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in 1994 and covered his life up to the year 1969. The second, titled And the Sea is Never Full and published in 1999, covered the years from 1969 to 1999.
Political activism
Wiesel and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
in 1986. He served as chairman of the President's Commission on the
Holocaust (later renamed the US Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to
1986, spearheading the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Sigmund Strochlitz was his close friend and confidant during these years.
The Holocaust Memorial Museum gives the Elie Wiesel Award to
"internationally prominent individuals whose actions have advanced the
Museum's vision of a world where people confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity". The Foundation had invested its endowment in money manager Bernard L. Madoff's investment Ponzi scheme, costing the Foundation $15 million and Wiesel and his wife much of their own personal savings.
A staunch foe of the death penalty, Wiesel stated that he thought that even Adolf Eichmann should not have been executed.
Support for Israeli government policy
In 1982, at the request of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Wiesel agreed to resign from his position as chairman of a planned international conference on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide.
Wiesel then worked with the Foreign Ministry in its attempts to get the
conference either canceled or to remove all discussion of the Armenian
genocide from it, and to those ends he provided the Foreign Ministry
with internal documents on the conference's planning and lobbied fellow
academics to not attend the conference.
Following his death, Wiesel was criticized by some for his
perceived silence on certain Israeli government policies with regards to
the Palestinians.
During his lifetime, Wiesel had deflected questions on the topic,
claiming to abstain from commenting on Israel's internal debates. Hussein Ibish claimed after his death that despite this position, Wiesel had gone on record as supporting the idea of expanding Jewish settlements
into the Palestinian territories conquered by Israel during the 6 Day
War, such settlements are considered illegal by the international
community.
Awards
Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism. The Norwegian Nobel Committee
described Wiesel as "one of the most important spiritual leaders and
guides in an age when violence, repression, and racism continue to
characterize the world" and called him a "messenger to mankind". It also
stressed that Wiesel's commitment originated in the sufferings of the
Jewish people but that he expanded it to embrace all repressed peoples
and races.
In his acceptance speech he delivered a message "of peace,
atonement, and human dignity". He explained his feelings: "Silence
encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must
interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in
jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant."
Wiesel co-founded Moment magazine with Leonard Fein in 1975. They founded the magazine to provide a voice for American Jews. He was also a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.
In April 1999, Wiesel delivered the speech "The Perils of
Indifference" in Washington D.C., criticizing the people and countries
who chose to be indifferent while the Holocaust was happening. He
defined indifference as being neutral between two sides, which, in this
case, amounts to overlooking the victims of the Holocaust. Throughout
the speech, he expressed the view that a little bit of attention, either
positive or negative, is better than no attention at all.
In 2003, he discovered and publicized the fact that at least 280,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, along with other groups, were massacred in Romanian-run death camps.
In 2005, he gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the new building of Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust History Museum:
I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were
there won't agree with that statement. The statement is: it was man's
inhumanity to man. NO! It was man's inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not
killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they
were not human beings! They were Jews!
In early 2006, Wiesel accompanied Oprah Winfrey as she visited Auschwitz, a visit which was broadcast as part of The Oprah Winfrey Show. On November 30, 2006, Wiesel received a knighthood in London in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education in the United Kingdom.
In September 2006, he appeared before the UN Security Council with actor George Clooney to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
When Wiesel died, Clooney wrote, "We had a champion who carried our
pain, our guilt, and our responsibility on his shoulders for
generations."
In 2007, Wiesel was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award. That same year, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a letter condemning Armenian genocide denial,
a letter that was signed by 53 Nobel laureates including Wiesel. Wiesel
repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old campaign to downplay its actions
during the Armenian genocide a double killing.
President George W. Bush, joined by the Dalai Lama and Wiesel, October 17, 2007, to the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., for the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama
In June 2009, Wiesel accompanied US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they toured the Buchenwald concentration camp. Wiesel was an adviser at the Gatestone Institute. In 2010, Wiesel accepted a five-year appointment as a Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Chapman University in Orange County, California.
In that role, he made a one-week visit to Chapman annually to meet with
students and offer his perspective on subjects ranging from Holocaust
history to religion, languages, literature, law and music.
In July 2009, Wiesel announced his support to the minority Tamils
in Sri Lanka. He said that, "Wherever minorities are being persecuted,
we must raise our voices to protest ... The Tamil people are being
disenfranchised and victimized by the Sri Lanka authorities. This
injustice must stop. The Tamil people must be allowed to live in peace
and flourish in their homeland."
In 2009, Wiesel returned to Hungary for his first visit since the
Holocaust. During this visit, Wiesel participated in a conference at
the Upper House Chamber of the Hungarian Parliament, met Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and President László Sólyom, and made a speech to the approximately 10,000 participants of an anti-racist gathering held in Faith Hall. However, in 2012, he protested against "the whitewashing" of Hungary's involvement in the Holocaust, and he gave up the Great Cross award he had received from the Hungarian government.
Wiesel was active in trying to prevent Iran from making nuclear
weapons, stating that, "The words and actions of the leadership of Iran
leave no doubt as to their intentions". He also condemned Hamas for the "use of children as human shields" during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict by running an ad in several large newspapers. The Times
refused to run the advertisement, saying, "The opinion being expressed
is too strong, and too forcefully made, and will cause concern amongst a
significant number of Times readers."
Wiesel often emphasized the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and criticized the Obama administration for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt East Jerusalem Israeli settlement construction.
He stated that "Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than
six hundred times in Scripture—and not a single time in the Koran ... It
belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city".
In 1969 he married Marion Erster Rose, who originally was from Austria and also translated many of his books. They had one son, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, named after Wiesel's father. The family lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel by 22-year-old Holocaust denier Eric Hunt in February 2007, but was not injured. Hunt was arrested the following month and charged with multiple offenses.
In February 2012, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints performed a posthumous baptism for Simon Wiesenthal's parents without proper authorization.
After his own name was submitted for proxy baptism, Wiesel spoke out
against the unauthorized practice of posthumously baptizing Jews and
asked presidential candidate and Latter-day Saint Mitt Romney to denounce it. Romney's campaign declined to comment, directing such questions to church officials.
Death and aftermath
Wiesel died on the morning of July 2, 2016, at his home in Manhattan, aged 87. After a private funeral service was conducted in honor of him at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, he was buried at the Sharon Gardens Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, on July 3.
Utah senator Orrin Hatch
paid tribute to Wiesel in a speech on the Senate floor the following
week, in which he said that "With Elie's passing, we have lost a beacon
of humanity and hope. We have lost a hero of human rights and a luminary
of Holocaust literature."
In 2018, antisemitic graffiti was found on the house where Wiesel was born.
Awards and honors
Prix de l'Université de la Langue Française (Prix Rivarol) for The Town Beyond the Wall, 1963.
Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1996, presented by Awards Council member Rosa Parks at the Academy's 35th annual Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.
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