Marcelin Berthelot

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Marcelin Berthelot

Marcelin (also: Marcellin ) Pierre Eugène Berthelot (born October 25, 1827 in Paris ; † March 18, 1907 ibid) was a French chemist , science historian and politician. He discovered a synthesis of formic acid from carbon monoxide , which is still used today .

Live and act

Marcelin Berthelot was a son of Jacques-Martin Berthelot and his wife Ernestine Sophie Claudine Biard. He was the second of three children; the first child died as an infant. The father came from a family of iron smiths and studied medicine in Paris in 1822. During the cholera epidemic in 1832 he was very active as a doctor. At the age of eleven, Marcellin Berthelot joined the Collège Henri IV in Paris. Although he was very interested in history and philosophy as a student, Berthelot turned to the natural sciences during his studies. In 1847 Berthelot was bachelierés lettres and attended courses at the Paris Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Science. He graduated in July 1849.

Since 1851 he was an assistant in the working group of his former university professor Antoine Jerome Balard at the Collège de France , around this time his lifelong friendship with Ernest Renan began . On June 24, 1854, he submitted his doctoral thesis on the subject of Mémoire sur les combinaisons de la Glycerin avec les acides et sur la synthese des principes immédiats des graisses des animaux , in which he describes research results in continuation of the work of Michel Eugène Chevreul . In 1859 he received a professorship for organic chemistry at the École Supérieure de Pharmacie and in 1865 a chair at the Collège de France was set up for his research. Since May 10, 1861 he was married to Sophie Niaudet (1837-1907). Both had six children: Marcel André (1862–1939), Marie-Hélène (1863–1895), Camille (1864–1928), Daniel (1865–1927), Philippe (1866–1934) and René (1872–1960). In 1863 he became a member of the Académie nationale de Médecine , ten years later he was admitted to the Académie des sciences , the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1889 successor to Louis Pasteur as its permanent secretary. In 1880 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge , Massachusetts, and in 1883 by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC Since 1877 he was a foreign member ("Foreign Member") of the Royal Society and since 1878 President of the Commission des Substances explosives . Since 1869 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1889 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1895 he became an elected member of the American Philosophical Society .

In 1876 he was appointed Inspector General for Education and after his election to a permanent seat in the French Senate in 1881 he was particularly involved in the educational issues relating to conscription. In René Goblet's cabinet from 1886–1887, he took over the office of Education Minister and from November 1, 1895 to March 28, 1896, he was French Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Léon Bourgeois .

A son of Sophie Niaudet and Marcelin Berthelot was cruelly killed in a railway accident in 1904 . Since then, Berthelot's wife has had a serious heart condition. He had asserted several times that he did not want to survive his sick wife Sophie Niaudet (1837-1907) and died only a few minutes after her. The French government wanted to bury Berthelot in the Panthéon , but in view of the circumstances of his death they did not want to separate him from his wife, so that both of them found their final resting place there.

Scientific work

Since 1860 Berthelot dealt with the synthesis of organic compounds. He made ethanol from ethylene and methanol from methane . He later found a method to produce formic acid from carbon monoxide, and also a synthesis of acetylene in a carbon arc with the addition of hydrogen.

From 1869 he turned to thermochemistry . Berthelot assumed that the reaction driving force of a substance conversion was crucially dependent on the amount of heat generated. This finding was later improved by Hermann Helmholtz . Berthelot carried out a large number of measurements on the heat of combustion of chemical substances and determined the heat of formation. The description of chemical reactions as exothermic or endothermic comes from Berthelot.

He later also studied explosives and animals using thermochemical methods. He also dealt with the history of chemistry and alchemy.

On August 17, 1882, he was accepted into the Prussian Order pour le merite for science and the arts as a foreign member for his scientific merits.

Works

  • Investigations on the affinities, on the formation and decomposition of the ethers . Ostwald's classic of the exact sciences; 173. Leipzig: Engelmann, 1910. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
  • La chimie au moyen age, 3 volumes, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale 1893, volume 1 , volume 2 , volume 3
  • Introduction a l'etude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen age, Steinheil 1889
  • La revolution chimique, Lavoisier , Felix Alcan 1890
  • with C.-Em. Ruelle Collection des ancien alchimistes grecq , 3 volumes, Steinheil 1887/88 (text and translation)
  • Les origines de l'alchimie , Steinheil 1885
  • Science et philosophy , Calmann-Levy 1886
  • La synthèse chimique , 6th edition, Felix Alcan 1887
  • Essai de mecanique chimique , Dunod 1879
  • with Émile Jungfleisch : Traité elementaire de chimie organique , 3rd edition, Dunod, 2 volumes, 1886
  • Traité pratique de calorimétrie chimique , Gauthier-Villars, Masson 1893
  • Sur la force des matières explosives d'apres la thermochimie , 2 volumes, Gauthier-Villars, 3rd edition 1883
  • Lecons sur les methodes generales de synthèse au chimie organique , Gauthier-Villars (Lectures College de France 1864)
  • Lecons sur la thermochimie , Revues des cours scientifique, Germer-Baillière (held 1865)
  • Lecons sur les principes sucrés , Hachette (held before the Paris Chemical Society in 1862)
  • Lecons sur l'isomérie , Hachette (held before the Paris Chemical Society 1863)

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ MP Crosland: Biography (English).
  2. ↑ Family genealogy .
  3. ^ Member entry by Marcellin Berthelot (with a link to an obituary) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 4, 2017.
  4. ^ Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 9, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Member History: Marcelin Berthelot. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 1, 2018 .
  6. ↑ The Order Pour le Merite for Science and the Arts - The Members of the Order , Volume II (1882–1952). Gebr. Mann-Verlag, Berlin 1978, p. 2.
predecessor Office successor
Gabriel Hanotaux Foreign Minister of France
November 1, 1895 - March 28, 1896 		Léon Bourgeois
predecessor Office successor
René Goblet Minister of Education of France
December 11, 1886 - May 30, 1887 		Eugène Spuller
personal data
SURNAME Berthelot, Marcelin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berthelot, Marcellin (different spelling); Berthelot, Pierre-Eugène Marcelin (full name); Berthelot, Marcellin Pierre Eugène; Berthelot, Marcelin Pierre Eugène
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chemist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1907
Place of death Paris