Jean-Henri Hassenfratz

Portrait of Jean-Henri Hassenfratz

Jean-Henri Hassenfratz (born December 20, 1755 in Paris , † February 26, 1827 there ) was a French mineralogist , physicist , chemist and politician.

Live and act

Jean-Henri Hassenfratz was the eldest son of Jean Hassenfratz, called le lièvre ("the hare") and Marie-Marguerite Dagommer. His parents worked in the catering trade and ran a well-known restaurant. They had been married to each other since February 1, 1755.

Hassenfratz was a cabin boy in his earliest youth on a French warship sailing to Martinique . He received an apprenticeship from a carpenter in Paris for about five years, trained as an autodidact theoretically in construction, heard lectures from Gaspard Monge and in 1780 became an engineer geographer. In 1781 Hassenfratz was a member of the 6e régiment de dragons . In 1783, Hassenfratz traveled to Styria , Carinthia , Hungary and part of Germany on behalf of the French government in order to get to know mining and metallurgy better. On his return he became director of the laboratory of Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier (1743–1794), the founder of modern chemistry.

During the French Revolution (1789–1799) Hassenfratz was a member of the Jacobin Club and the Paris City Council and succeeded in ensuring that the arrest of the Girondins , which was decided on the night of May 31, was postponed to the next morning, thereby saving many lives and freedom . At that time, his writings pursued revolutionary tendencies.

In 1787, together with Pierre-Auguste Adet , he worked out a system of chemical sign language which, among other things, clarified the physical state of a substance. They used characters as , , , or Latin capital letters like , . In the latter signs the way for Jöns Jakob Berzelius and his chemical sign system was laid, so to speak. ${\ displaystyle - \! \,}$ ${\ displaystyle \ triangle}$ ${\ displaystyle \ nabla}$ ${\ displaystyle \ bigodot}$ ${\ displaystyle \ bigodot \! \! \! \! \! \! \! {\ hbox {A}}}$ ${\ displaystyle \ bigodot \! \! \! \! \! \! \! \! {\ hbox {M}}}$

On August 10, 1792 he became a member of the Paris Commune from 1789 to 1795. In 1793, the Minister of War Jean-Nicolas Pache appointed him director of the administration of equipment and ammunition in the Ministry of War, directeur de l'administration du matériel au ministère de la Guerre . Hassenfratz made great contributions to the mining industry, to the reorganization of the military school and the establishment of the École polytechnique , where he was employed as a professor of physics in 1794. In 1797 he became a professor at the mining school. In 1814 he retired.

He died on February 26, 1827 and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris in the 51st Division.

Works

École d'exercice, ou manuel militaire de l'infanterie, cavalerie et artillerie nationale (Paris 1790; appeared soon after as
Catéchisme militaire, ou manuel du garde national , Paris 1790) and
Cours révolutionnaire d'administration militaire (Paris 1794).
Traité de l'art du charpentier (Paris 1804)
Sidérotechnie, ou l'art de traiter les minéraux de fer, pour en obtenir de la fonte, du fer et de l'acier (Paris 1812, 4 vols.);
Dictionnaire physique de l'Encyclopédie (Paris 1816–1821, 4 vols.);
New system of ... chemical symbols. Jean Henri Hassenfratz and Pierre Auguste Adet. In: Method of chemical nomenclature (method de nomenclature chimique, German). Vienna, 1793.
System of chemical symbols for anti-inflammatory chemistry and their nomenclature / by [Jean Henri] Hassenfratz and [Pierre Auguste] Adet . For the use of German cutting artists … ed. by Karl Frh. von Meldinger. Vienna: Wappler in Komm, 1793 (Nouveau Système de caractères chimiques, German).
The most important of the iron and steel industry . Trans. U. accompanied by note v. Traugott Lebr. Hate. 2 vols., Leipzig: Baumgärtner, 1820–1821.
Èncyclopédie Méthodique (Dictionnaire de Physique) . Paris 1816-1821, 4 vols.
Traité théorique et pratique de l'art de calciner la pierre calcaire, et de fabriquer toutes sortes de mortiers, ciments, bétons etc., soit à bras d'hommes, soit à l'aide de machines . Paris, 1825.

literature

Emmanuel Grison: L'étonnant parcours du républicain Jean-Henry Hassenfratz (1755-1827) , In: Collection Histoire et Sociétés, 1996, ISBN 2-911762-04-5
U. Klein; W. Lefèvre: Materials in eighteenth-century science. MIT-Press, Cambridge (2007)
Michaela Hörmann: The expansion of chemistry terminology in France in the 18th century. Diploma thesis agency, Hamburg 1995 ISBN 3-8386-0210-2

Web links

Wikisource: Jean-Henri Hassenfratz - Sources and full texts

Biography with portrait (French)
Biography in English of Arthur Birembaut
Large summary table of the nomenclature . (1788) English translation James St. John of the Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787)

Individual evidence

^ Grison, Emmanuel: L'Etonnant parcours du républicain JH Hassenfratz (1755-1827). Du Faubourg Montmatre au corps du mines, (1997), p. 12
↑ JH Hassenfratz, Pierre-Auguste Adet : Treatise on the new symbols to be used in chemistry. Paris 1787 ( digitized ).

personal data
SURNAME	Hassenfratz, Jean-Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French mineralogist, physicist, chemist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH	December 20, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH	Paris
DATE OF DEATH	February 26, 1827
Place of death	Paris

[1] Grison, Emmanuel: L'Etonnant parcours du républicain JH Hassenfratz (1755-1827). Du Faubourg Montmatre au corps du mines, (1997), p. 12

[2] JH Hassenfratz, Pierre-Auguste Adet : Treatise on the new symbols to be used in chemistry. Paris 1787 ( digitized ).