Jacques Étienne Bérard

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Jacques Étienne Bérard (born October 12, 1789 in Montpellier , † June 10, 1869 ibid) was a French naturalist, physicist and chemist .

Life

The son of Étienne Bérard (1764–1839) and Thérèse Salettes (approx. 1774–1839), both married since 1788, was JE Bérard. Étienne Bérard was a manufacturer of chemicals and known to the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet (1748–1822). He recommended his son to him as a laboratory assistant. In 1807 the young JE Bérard went to the house of Claude Louis Berthollet in Arcueil near Paris. In July 1807 he became a member of the Société d'Arcueil . He used the proximity of his new domicile to Paris to complete his license ès sciences at the university study system reorganized by Napoleon Bonapartes (1769-1821) by decree of March 17, 1808, Décret portant organization de l'Université , in 1811 . He was elected to the chemistry department of the Paris Académie des Sciences on December 20, 1819 .

JE Bérard was married to Madeleine Anaïs Combres (* approx. 1810) since 1829. They had three children: Stéphanie Françoise Amica Bérard (* approx. 1832), Henri Étienne Bérard (* 1836) and Raoul Bérard (* 1841).

In 1827 he became professor at the School of Pharmacy, École de Pharmacie de Montpellier, and in 1832 at the Faculté de médecine , Faculté de médecine , in Montpellier. From 1847 to 1869 he became the dean of the medical faculty of Montpellier, Académie des sciences et lettres de Montpellier , Doyen de la Faculté de Médecine and Correspondant de l'Institut . From 1837 to 1839 he was a member of parliament and later a city councilor in Montpellier.

Scientific achievements

JE Bérard's first published work (1809–1810) was based on the analysis of salts and a study of their solubility, a research he carried out at the behest of Claude Louis Berthollet. He researched the measurement of the density of nitrogen monoxide (NO) together with Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850) in order to create a reference point for his gas laws. JE Bérard worked together with Étienne Louis Malus (1775-1812) on a study of infrared and ultraviolet radiation and clarified their polarizability and birefringence .

JE Bérard's most famous research came about in collaboration with François-Étienne de La Roche (1781–1813) to determine the specific heat ( specific heat capacity ) of gases. Both improved the measuring methods of Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Pierre Simon Laplace (1749–1827) and achieved reproducible results for the first time. You received a prize for this scientific work from the Académie des Sciences in 1813.

In 1821, JE Bérard was awarded a prize by the Académie des sciences for his work on the ripening of fruits. It was the first scientific study of the effect of various gases on the ripening of fruits. JE Bérard recognized that harvested fruits consume oxygen (O 2 ) and give off carbon dioxide (CO 2 ).

Works

  • JE Bérard: Observations on the Alkaline Oxalates and Superoxalates, and particularly on the Proportions of their Elements . In: Journal of the Nature and Philosophy of Chemistry and the Arts . tape 31 , 1812, pp. 20–33 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • François De La Roche, JE Bérard: Mémoire sur la détermination de la chaleur spécifique des différents gaz . Perronneau, Paris 1813.

literature

  • Frederic L. Holmes, Trevor H. Levere (Eds.): Instruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry. (= Dibner Institute Studies in the History of Science and Technology ). 1999, ISBN 0-262-08282-9 .
  • E. Mendoza: Delaroche and Bérard and experimental error. In: The British Journal for the History of Science. 23, 1990, pp. 285-292.
  • Karl-Heinz Schlote: Chronology of the natural sciences: The path of mathematics and natural sciences from the beginnings into the 21st century. 13,000 entries sorted by year. German, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-8171-1610-1 .
  • Maurice Crosland: The Society of Arcueil. A View of French Science at the Time of Napoleon I. Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 134-136, 292-293, 316-317.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members of the Académie des science (letter B) , accessed on October 11, 2016.
  2. ↑ Membership list of the Académie des sciences et lettres de Montpellier from 1846 as PDF .
  3. ↑ Biography and bibliography on www.encyclopia.com .
personal data
SURNAME Bérard, Jacques Étienne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French naturalist, physicist and chemist
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Montpellier
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1869
Place of death Montpellier