Louis Jacques Thénard
Louis Jacques Thénard (born May 4, 1777 in La Louptière , near Nogent-sur-Seine ( Aube ), † June 21, 1857 in Paris ) was a French chemist .
Life
Thénard was the second son of Étienne Amable Thénard (1738-1809) and his wife Cécile Thénard, née Savourat, a poor farming family with a total of seven children. He was promoted by a local Catholic priest so that he could be sent to the academy in Sens at the age of eleven . At sixteen he went to Paris to study pharmacy . There he heard lectures by Antoine François de Fourcroy (1755–1809) and Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin (1763–1829) and was given modest access to Vauquelin's laboratory. He made such rapid progress that after two or three years he was able to take his teacher's place in lectures. Fourcroy and Vauquelin were so taken with him that she for him in 1797, the site of a chemistry teacher and in 1798 a job as a tutor at the polytechnique École einrichteten. Vauquelin gave up his professorship at the Collège de France in 1804 and used his influence to assign the position to Thénard. Six years later, after Fourcroy's death, he was elected chairman of the chemistry department at the École Polytechnique. In 1809, together with Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac , he was awarded the Galvanic Prize of 3,000 Francs, which was given by Napoleon Bonaparte , by the mathematical-physical class of the Institut de France .
On August 11, 1814, he married Jeanne Victoire Humblot-Conté (1795–1855).
As a member of the academy, he was Fourcroy's successor. In 1825 he received the title of baron from King Charles X ; In 1832 Louis Philippe made him a member of the hereditary nobility. From 1827 to 1830 he represented the Yonne department in the Chamber of Deputies. As Vice-President of the Conseil Supérieur de l'Instruction Publique (for example, the High Council for Public Education), he had a great influence on scientific education in France.
Before anything else, Thénard was a teacher. As he himself said, the professor, assistants, laboratory and everything else must be devoted to the students. Like most great teachers, he published a textbook. His Traité de chimie élémentaire, théorique et pratique (4 volumes, Paris, 1813 - 1816 ) was considered a standard work for a quarter of a century and perhaps contributed more to the progress of chemistry than Thénard's numerous discoveries.
Shortly after working as a tutor at the Polytechnic, he began a lifelong friendship with Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778–1850). The two did a lot of research together. Careful analysis led him to challenge Claude Louis Berthollet's (1748–1822) theoretical views on the composition of metal oxides . Far from rejecting a younger man's corrections, Berthollet invited him to become a member of the Société d'Arcueil . The collection of the Mémoires de Physique et de Chimie de la Société d'Arcueil , first published in 1807, shows that alongside Claude Louis Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), to name just a few, were among the nine founding members of the Société d'Arcueil, which met from 1806 to 1822, belonged.
In 1861 a statue was erected in his birthplace in memory of him and in 1865 the name of his hometown was changed to La Louptière-Thénard .
His name is immortalized on the Eiffel Tower, see: The 72 names on the Eiffel Tower .
His son Paul Thénard was also a chemist and was known for fighting phylloxera .
Scientific achievements
Thénard's first publication in 1799 dealt with the compounds of arsenic and antimony with oxygen and sulfur . One of his most important works, begun in 1807, dealt with compound ethers . In addition, his studies of sebacic acid and bile deserve mention, as does his discovery of hydrogen peroxide . In 1802 he produced the pigment Thénards Blue , which is still known and used today .
Together with Gay-Lussac he worked on the chemical elements boron , chlorine , aluminum , silicon , iodine , potassium and compounds such as esters . In addition to numerous publications, he wrote a four-volume standard textbook on chemistry.
Fonts (selection)
- with Joseph L. Gay-Lussac : Sur la décomposition de la potasse et de la soude. In: Annales de Chimie . Volume 65, 1808, pp. 325–326 , (again in: Les Métaux légers, aluminum, glucinium, magnésium, métaux alcalins (= Les classiques de la découverte scientifique. ). Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1938).
- with Joseph L. Gay-Lussac: Recherches physico-chimiques. 2 volumes. Deterville, Paris 1811, (digital copies: Volume 1 , Volume 2 ).
- Traité de chimie élémentaire, théorique et pratique. 4 volumes. Crochard, Paris 1813-1816, (digital copies: Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3 , Volume 4 ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Genealogy of the parents
- ^ Ernest Maindron: Les fondations de prix à l'Académie des sciences. The lauréats de l'Académie. 1714-1880. Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1881, pp. 69-70 .
- ↑ Genealogy
- ↑ Graphic of the periodic table with elements known up to the year 1830 ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thénard, Louis Jacques |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 4, 1777 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | La Louptière near Nogent-sur-Seine |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 21, 1857 |
| Place of death | Paris |