Marc Antoine Augustin Gaudin

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Marc Antoine Augustin Gaudin

Marc Antoine Augustin Gaudin (born April 5, 1804 in Saintes , † August 2, 1880 in Paris ) was a French chemist .

life and career

Gaudin was a merchant's son and he was a pupil of André-Marie Ampère and Jean-Baptiste Dumas in Paris . From 1835 to 1864 he worked as a computer in the Paris Bureau des Longitudes .

His scientific interests included photography , mineralogy and chemistry . He was the first chemist who succeeded in making artificial rubies using an oxyhydrogen mixture . The first successful production of glass from pure quartz in 1837 was of particular technical importance . Glass is usually produced as a solidified, non-crystallized melt from various components. In the case of one-component glass made of quartz, i.e. pure silica , the melting point is significantly higher. In addition, its production requires a greater purity of the starting material. The quartz glass produced by Gaudin is characterized by particularly advantageous properties: extreme heat resistance, low thermal expansion and high UV permeability. It is particularly suitable as a material for high temperature thermometers with a measuring range of up to 1000 ° C. Due to its special properties, the special glass produced by Gaudin gained great importance in technology.

However, Gaudin's main scientific focus was the attempt to explain chemical phenomena through the spatial arrangement of atoms in molecules (and of molecules in crystals). As early as 1833 Gaudin concluded from Avogadro's law in an essay on the existence of atoms and molecules with the correct prediction that hydrogen and oxygen exist as diatomic molecules in the gas state. This did not generally take hold until around 1860 with the work of Stanislao Cannizzaro . His contributions built on previous work by Ampère and attempted to understand chemical compounds through geometrical considerations and the formation of polyhedral molecules. Gaudin also gave the correct atomic weight of 23 elements. He summarized his forty-year research in the work L'architecture du monde des atomes , published in 1873 . During his lifetime, Gaudin and his theories received little scientific recognition.

With his younger brother Alexis he dealt with photography and stereoscopy. He himself was mainly active in science, his brother was involved in business, had a photo shop and published the magazine La Lumière from 1851 to 1867. The third brother Charles was also in the photo business. In memory of his pioneering work in photography, Gaudin Point bears his name, a headland on the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Fonts

  • Traité pratique de photographie, Paris, J.-J. Dubochet, 1844
  • Recherches sur les groupements des atomes dans les molécules, 1847
  • Resumé géneral du daguerrréotype, 1852
  • Vade mecum du photographe: notice abrégée du daguerréotype et de la photographie sur paper, avec un répertoire de chimie et physique et un formulaire, Paris: Poitevin 1861, Gallica
  • Réflexions d'un chimiste philosophe sur les maladies épidémiques, la fièvre des marais, la fièvre jaune, la fièvre typhoïde, la variole, le choléra, la peste, etc., Paris: Charles Gaudin 1866, Gallica
  • L'architecture du monde des atomes. Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1873, Gallica

literature

  • Gaudin, Marc Antoine Augustin in: Winfried R. Pötsch (lead), Annelore Fischer, Wolfgang Müller: Lexicon of important chemists , Harri Deutsch 1989, ISBN 978-3-817-11055-1 , p. 163.
  • Denis Pellerin: Gaudin frères. Pionniers de la photographie, 1839–1872, Chalons-sur-Saône, Société des amis du musée Nicéphore-Niépce, 1997

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Seymour H. Mauskopf: The Atomic Structural Theories of Ampère and Gaudin: Molecular Speculation and Avogadro's Hypothesis . In: Isis . 60, No. 1, 1969, pp. 61-74. doi : 10.1086 / 350449 . Retrieved February 14, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Gaudin, Marc Antoine Augustin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1804
PLACE OF BIRTH Saintes
DATE OF DEATH August 2, 1880
Place of death Paris