Google Doodle pays tribute to Bunsen inventor

Search giant Google on Thursday decided to pay tribute to German chemist Robert Bunsen, the inventor of the ubiquitous Bunsen burner found in every high school chemistry lab. The latest of many “Google Doodles" posted on March 31 celebrated Bunsen's 200th birthday. Visitors to Google’s homepage were greeted with an animated laboratory highlighted by Bunsen’s invention, supposedly the most effective laboratory burner in use. Hovering the mouse or pointer over the animation would reveal the reason for the doodle: “Robert Bunsen’s 200th Birthday." Aside from being remembered as the inventor of the Bunsen Burner, Bunsen was also one of the most influential chemistry teachers of his time, teaching at the Universities in Marburg, Breslau and Heidelberg, as well as the Polytechnic School of Kassel, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in London. Some of his more notable students included Henry Roscoe, Friedrich Beilstein, John Tyndall, Edward Frankland and Dmitri Mendeleev, the creator of the Periodic Table. An RSC article on Bunsen said he “never married and devoted most of his time to his research and his teaching." — TJD, GMA News