Frédéric Swarts

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First Solvay Chemistry Congress 1922, Swarts is in the back row with the tree top behind his head

Frédéric Jean Edmond Swarts (born September 2, 1866 in Ixelles , † September 6, 1940 in Gent ) was a Belgian chemist (organic chemistry).

His father Theodore Swarts (1839-1911) was also a chemist and successor to August Kekulé as a chemistry professor in Ghent. Swarts studied from 1885 at the University of Ghent, where he received his doctorate in chemistry in 1889 and in medicine in 1891. He was a repetitor for chemistry at the University of Ghent and from 1903 his father's successor as chemistry professor.

He was one of the first to deal with organic fluorine compounds (first synthesis of trichlorofluoromethane in 1891) and thus was the first to produce chlorofluorocarbons (freons) and also many organic bromofluorocompounds. Because of the violent reactions and toxicity of fluorine, he had to use indirect methods and developed a double decomposition process with organic polyhalides and inorganic fluorides (especially antimony trifluoride and mercury fluoride). The basic reaction he found was named the Swarts reaction after him . Freons were used as refrigerants for refrigerators in 1930 (Thomas Midgley, AL Henne). Swarts studied the physico-chemical properties of the fluorocarbons and showed that they exert lower intermolecular forces than the corresponding non-fluorinated compounds.

In 1922 he produced the strong organic acid trifluoroacetic acid .

He was a member of the Belgian Academy of Sciences (Académie Royale des Sciences des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique) and a corresponding member of the Institut de France ( Académie des sciences ). Swarts was President of the Institut International de Chimie Solvay and Vice President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry .

Fonts

  • Cours de Chimie Organique , Librairie Scientifique, Paris: Hermann 1908

literature

  • Albert B. Costa: Swarts, Frédéric Jean Edmond , Dictionary of Scientific Biography , 2008
  • George B. Kauffman: Frederic Swarts: Pioneer in organic fluorine chemistry , Journal of Chemical Education, Volume 32, 1955, p. 301
personal data
SURNAME Swarts, Frédéric
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Swarts, Frédéric Jean Edmond
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian chemist
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Ixelles
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1940
Place of death Ghent