S. P. L. Sørensen

S. P. L. Sørensen
S. P. L. Sørensen
Born	9 January 1868 Havrebjerg, Denmark
Died	12 February 1939(1939-02-12) (aged 71)
Nationality	Danish
Fields	Chemistry
Institutions	Carlsberg Laboratory
Known for	pH

Soren Peder Lauritz Sorensen (9 January 1868 – 12 February 1939) was a Danish chemist, famous for the introduction of the concept of pH, a scale for measuring acidity and alkalinity. He was born in Havrebjerg, Denmark.

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 p_H), 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.