Editing Gilbert N. Lewis (section)

==Death==
On 23 March 1946,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Helmenstine |first1=Todd |title=Today in Science History - March 23 - Gilbert Lewis |url=https://sciencenotes.org/today-in-science-history-march-23-gilbert-lewis/ |website=Science Notes and Projects |access-date=6 August 2020 |date=22 March 2018}}</ref> a graduate student found Lewis's lifeless body under a laboratory workbench at Berkeley. Lewis had been working on an experiment with liquid [[hydrogen cyanide]], and deadly fumes from a broken line had leaked into the laboratory. The coroner ruled that the cause of death was [[coronary artery disease]], because of a lack of any signs of cyanosis,<ref name="Coffey">Coffey (2008): 310-15.</ref>  but some believe that it may have been a suicide. Berkeley Emeritus Professor William Jolly, who reported the various views on Lewis's death in his 1987 history of UC Berkeley's College of Chemistry, ''From Retorts to Lasers'', wrote that a higher-up in the department believed that Lewis had committed suicide.<ref name=":5" />

If Lewis's death was indeed a suicide, a possible explanation was depression brought on by a lunch with [[Irving Langmuir]]. Langmuir and Lewis had a long rivalry, dating back to Langmuir's extensions of Lewis's theory of the chemical bond. Langmuir had been awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on [[surface chemistry]], while Lewis had not received the Prize despite having been nominated 41 times.<ref name="NobelPrize" /> On the day of Lewis's death, Langmuir and Lewis had met for lunch at Berkeley, a meeting that Michael Kasha recalled only years later.<ref name="Coffey" /> Associates reported that Lewis came back from lunch in a dark mood, played a morose game of bridge with some colleagues, then went back to work in his lab. An hour later, he was found dead. Langmuir's papers at the [[Library of Congress]] confirm that he had been on the Berkeley campus that day to receive an honorary degree.

Lewis Hall at Berkeley, built in 1948, is named in his honor.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|url=https://access.berkeley.edu/lewis-hall|title=Lewis Hall {{!}} Campus Access Services|website=access.berkeley.edu|access-date=2019-03-09}}</ref>