Jean Servais Stas

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Jean Servais Stas

Jean Servais Stas (born August 21, 1813 in Leuven , then France , † December 13, 1891 in Brussels , Belgium ) was a Belgian chemist . For the first time he carried out exact measurements of atomic mass , including carbon .

Live and act

By training, Stas was a medical doctor. In 1837 he went to Paris to the École polytechnique to work as an assistant to the French chemist Jean Baptiste Dumas . Between 1840 and 1869 Stas was a professor at the École Royale Militaire in Brussels. Here he also advised the Belgian government on military issues.

During this time Stas proved for the first time that nicotine had been used as a poison in a murder, which made the case of Gustave Fougnies, murdered by Hippolyte Visart de Bocarmé , go down in criminal history. His work "Forensic investigations into nicotine" is an early work of modern toxicology . His analytical work forms the basis for the Stas-Otto separation process in pharmaceutical analysis, named after him and the German chemist Friedrich Julius Otto .

Even during his time in Paris as Dumas' assistant, he carried out measurements of the atomic mass - including the exact atomic mass of carbon for the first time - which he later specified and extended to many chemical elements . He took the oxygen = 16 as a reference point. His measurements did not confirm the long believed thesis of the English doctor William Prout that atomic masses must be whole numbers. His work laid the basis for the work of Dmitri Mendeleev and others on the periodic table of the elements . For over 50 years, Stas' measurements remained the standard.

Stas retired in 1869 because of problems with his voice, but was appointed commissioner for the Belgian Mint shortly thereafter . He resigned from this office in 1872 because of differences over his country's monetary policy . Since 1859 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1873 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In 1879 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society , in 1880 in the Académie des Sciences and in 1891 in the National Academy of Sciences .

Jean Servais Stas died in Brussels on December 13, 1891.

Jean Servais Stas Medal of the GTFCh

The scientific society founded in 1978 , the Society for Toxicological and Forensic Chemistry (GTFCh) based in Frankfurt am Main, has awarded a prize for “Services to Forensic Sciences ” every year since 1979 and every second year since 1989 . In honor of Jean Servais Stas, this award was named after him as the Jean Servais Stas Medal .

Web links

Commons : Jean Servais Stas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 231.
  2. ^ Entry on Stas, Jean-Servais (1813-1891) in the archives of the Royal Society , London
  3. ^ Homepage of the Society for Toxicological and Forensic Chemistry (GTFCh) (last accessed: June 3, 2009).
  4. ^ Winner of the Stas Prize at the GTFCh (last call: June 3, 2009).
personal data
SURNAME Stas, Jean Servais
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Leuven , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1891
Place of death Brussels