S. P. L. Sørensen

Søren Peder Lauritz Sørensen (January 9, 1868 - February 12, 1939). Born in Havrebjerg, Denmark, Sørensen was a Danish chemist, famous for the introduction of the concept of pH, a scale for measuring acidity.

From 1901 to 1938 he was head of the prestigious Carlsberg Laboratory, Copenhagen. While working at the Carlsberg Laboratory he studied the effect of ion concentration on proteins, and because the concentration of hydrogen ions was particularly important, he introduced the pH-scale as a simple way of expressing it in 1909. The article in which he introduced the scale (using the notation pH ), described two new methods for measuring acidity. The first method was based on electrodes, while the second involved comparing the colors of samples and a preselected set of indicators.

He is also known for the Sørensen formol titration.