Pierre-François Chabaneau

Pierre-François Chabaneau (* 1754 in Nontron , Dordogne , † 1842 ibid) was a French chemist who spent most of his life in Spain. He was one of the first chemists to succeed in producing forgeable platinum .

Childhood and youth

Chabaneau was born in 1754 in Nontron, a village in the French Dordogne department. His uncle, a member of the Order of St. Anthony, encouraged him to study theology . During Chabaneau's studies, his aversion to metaphysics was shown , which made him the opponent of his teachers, who in turn expelled him from school.

Feeling sympathy for Chabaneau in his poverty, the director of the Jesuit school in Passy offered him a position as professor of mathematics, although Chabaneau had only a basic understanding of arithmetic . By studying the class materials for the next day, Chabaneau taught himself algebra and geometry. His scientific interest soon expanded to include physics, natural history, and chemistry. In 1780 Chabaneau, convinced by his students Fausto and Juan José Elhuyar , began to teach French and chemistry / metallurgy at the newly founded Real Seminario Patriotico Vergara in Spain. The brothers Fausto and Juan José Elhuyar later made a name for themselves through the insulation of metallic tungsten . In 1781 Faust Elhuyar followed him as a professor at the Real Seminario Patriótico de Vergara.

Platinum research

After the Elhuyar brothers isolated metallic tungsten in 1783, they worked with Chabaneau on exploring platinum . This collaboration did not last long, however, as the brothers were appointed General Directors for Mining and soon left Spain for South America . King Charles III created a chair in mineralogy, physics and chemistry for Chabaneau in Madrid and set up a laboratory for his research. The Count d'Aranda secured the entire supply of platinum for Chabaneau's laboratory from the government.

Chabaneau could easily remove most of platinum's natural impurities, including gold, mercury, lead, copper, and iron, leading him to believe that he would be working with pure platinum. However, the metal properties that occurred were incompatible with one another: Sometimes it was plastically deformable, at other times it was very brittle. Sometimes it was completely incombustible, but sometimes it burned very easily. These contradictions were a result of the various impurities with rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and ruthenium. These elements later became known as platinum metals , but at the time Chabaneau was researching the area, they had not yet been found.

Chabaneau was so frustrated by his research that in 1786 he lost his ambition and smacked all his devices on the floor and exclaimed, "Get rid of everything! I'll throw it all over, they'll never make me the damned metal again to touch "Nevertheless, three months later Chabaneau presented Count d'Aranda with a 10 cm cube made of pure malleable cast iron. Its process, powder metallurgy and intensive heating, was kept secret until 1914.

Platinum Age and Death

Chabaneau realized that the mere difficulty of working the platinum would add value to the objects. He and Don Joaquín Cabezas ran a lucrative business that produced bars and crockery from platinum. This was the beginning of what is now known as the "Platinum Age in Spain", in which almost 18,000 troy ounces of malleable platinum cast iron were produced over a period of 22 years. The platinum age ended in 1808 when Chabaneau's laboratory was destroyed during the Second Coalition War.

In 1799 Chabaneau returned to France, near his home village of Nontron. He stayed there until he died in January 1842 at the age of 88.

literature

James Lewis Howe : Chabaneau: An Early Worker on Platinum, Popular Science Monthly, Volume 84, 1914, Wikisource

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f M. E. Weeks: Discovery of the Elements In: Journal of Chemical Education No. 7, 1968, ISBN 978-0-8486-8579-9 , pp. 385-407.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f J. C. Chaston: The Powder Metallurgy of Platinum (PDF; 777 kB) In: Platinum Metals Rev. 24, No. 2, 1980, pp. 70-79. (accessed on June 19, 2009)

personal data
SURNAME	Chabaneau, Pierre-François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French chemist
DATE OF BIRTH	1754
PLACE OF BIRTH	Nontron , Dordogne
DATE OF DEATH	1842
Place of death	Nontron , Dordogne

[weeks-1] A ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f M. E. Weeks: Discovery of the Elements In: Journal of Chemical Education No. 7, 1968, ISBN 978-0-8486-8579-9 , pp. 385-407.

[chaston-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f J. C. Chaston: The Powder Metallurgy of Platinum (PDF; 777 kB) In: Platinum Metals Rev. 24, No. 2, 1980, pp. 70-79. (accessed on June 19, 2009)