Costanzo Benedetto Bonvicino

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Costanzo Benedetto Bonvicino (* 1739 or 1741 in Centallo , Piedmont ; † January 25, 1812 in Turin ) was an Italian chemist.

Bonvicino, who came from a wealthy family, studied medicine in Turin with his degree in 1765. Although he was a member of the medical profession in Turin, he was mainly concerned with chemistry. In 1800 he became a professor of natural history and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Turin and in 1801 became president of the Turin Academy of Sciences, of which he had been a member since 1783. He was also director of the Natural History Museum and oversaw smallpox vaccination in the Po Valley and held several other public offices.

He dealt with mineralogy (e.g. opals , mineral deposits in the Piedmontese Alps) and technical chemistry (dye works, salt production, metallurgy, silkworm breeding). He dealt with analytics (e.g. analysis of mineral water springs and medicinal springs) and isolated phosphoric acid from calcium phosphate. He used potassium ferrocyanide to detect iron and also investigated fungal toxins (death cap mushroom).

At a time when most chemists in Italy were still adhering to the phlogiston theory, he was one of the first in Italy to take up (albeit critically) the innovations of the French school around Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier .

literature

  • Bonvicino: Elementi di chimica farmaceutica e di istoria naturale, 2 volumes, Turin 1804, 1810
  • Entry in Winfried Pötsch, Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists, Harri Deutsch 1989 (under Constanzo Benedetto Bonvicino)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Accademia delle Scienze di Torino
  2. ↑ Hydrophan variants that become transparent again when water is absorbed. He could also color them like turquoise with copper salt
  3. ↑ For example, he was one of the first to find titanium minerals in the Val d Aosta in 1808
personal data
SURNAME Bonvicino, Costanzo Benedetto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian chemist
DATE OF BIRTH 1739 or 1741
PLACE OF BIRTH Centallo
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1812
Place of death Turin