Pierre-Jean Robiquet

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Pierre-Jean Robiquet

Pierre-Jean Robiquet (born January 13, 1780 in Rennes , † April 29, 1840 in Paris ) was a French chemist . He is known as the discoverer of various alkaloids and, with asparagine, the first amino acid .

Life

Robiquet's father was an aspiring bookseller in Rennes and Robiquet was originally supposed to be an architect. After his parents were temporarily imprisoned as Girondins during the French Revolution, he apprenticed as a pharmacist in Lorient and studied chemistry and pharmacy in Paris from 1796 to 1799 with Antoine-François Fourcroy and Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin , who together had a chemical factory. He then became a military pharmacist in the French army, with which he was in Italy, including the siege of Genoa, which was defended by André Masséna (surrender 1800). After returning from Italy he was in the military hospital in Rennes and then in the military hospital Val-de-Grâce in Paris. From 1804 he worked in the laboratory of Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin in Paris. With him he carried out his first research. In 1808 he got his own pharmacy and married his cousin. At the same time he had a small chemical factory. In 1811 he became assistant professor and in 1814 professor at the École supérieure de pharmacie in Paris. There Pierre-Joseph Pelletier was his assistant and in 1825 his successor. Robiquet gave up his apprenticeship after 10 years and became treasurer of the Ecole de Pharmacie in 1824. At times he was a repetitor for chemistry at the École polytechnique .

In 1826 he was the founder and first president of the Société de Prévoyance des Pharmaciens . He was a member of the Société de Pharmacie and was its general secretary from 1817 to 1824 and from 1828 to 1840 and its president in 1826. In 1820 he became a member of the Académie royale de Médecine and in 1830 Knight of the Legion of Honor . In 1833 he became a member of the chemistry section of the Académie des Sciences, succeeding Jean-Antoine Chaptal .

Nicolas-Théodore Gobley was one of his assistants .

plant

Robiquet discovered, in some cases in collaboration with other scientists, among other things, the isolation of asparagine (1805, with vauquelin from asparagus sprouts), glycyrrhizin (1808 from liquorice), cantharidin (1811), caffeine (1821), alizarin and purpurin (1826 , with Colin), orcin (1829, from Orseille lichen), amygdalin (1807, from bitter almonds) and codeine (1832, from opium). In 1817 he won the Opium - alkaloid narcotin . But Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge got ahead of him with pupurine and caffeine . In the investigation of opium he was influenced by the investigations by Friedrich Sertürner , which had become known in France through Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac .

Robiquet was the first to detect sulfur-containing organic compounds ( mustard oil ). In 1836 he produced rufigallic acid by converting sulfuric acid with gallic acid .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. Walden: Chronological overview tables. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-53301-3 , p. 42 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
personal data
SURNAME Robiquet, Pierre-Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1780
PLACE OF BIRTH Rennes
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1840
Place of death Paris