Pierre-Joseph Pelletier

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Pierre-Joseph Pelletier

Pierre-Joseph Pelletier (born March 22, 1788 in Paris ; † July 20, 1842 there ) was a French chemist and pharmacist who was one of the first to research the active ingredients in medicinal plants. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Pellet. "

Live and act

Pierre-Joseph Pelletier was the son of the French pharmacist and chemist Bertrand Pelletier (1761–1797) and his wife Marguerite Sédillot, a sister of the French surgeon Jean Sédillot (1757–1840). Pelletier studied pharmacy in Paris until 1810, where he won prizes as a student, and from 1815 he was professor of natural sciences at the École Superieure de Pharmacie , initially as assistant to the professor Pierre-Jean Robiquet and later his successor. From 1832 he was its director. As the owner of a pharmacy on Rue Jacob (which previously belonged to Hilaire-Marin Rouelle ), he was financially independent.

Pelletier was a pioneer in the discovery and study of alkaloids .

In his doctoral thesis, Pelletier dealt with Opopanax , a vegetable resin that is obtained from Opopanax chironium (formerly Pastinaca opopanax ), which belongs to the umbelliferous family and was used as a remedy at the time. Pelletier then dealt with the active ingredients of opium and determined the molecular formula of the morphine discovered by Friedrich Sertürner in 1804 (as well as by Armand Séguin and Bernard Courtois ) . Together with his colleague Joseph Bienaimé Caventou , he isolated the green-coloring leaf substance in 1817 and named it chlorophyll . From Ignatius Brechnuss they isolated the active ingredient in 1818 strychnine and shortly afterwards from the ordinary Brechnuss the drug brucine (1819), both of which are highly toxic. In addition, in 1821 they isolated caffeine (like Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge before, but independently of him with Pierre-Jean Robiquet) and veratrine (from hellebore , like Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Meißner ) and dealt with cholesterol and the effect of nitric acid on bile acid . Together with the French physiologist and pharmacologist François Magendie , they isolated the emetine (an emetic) from the ipecacuanha root in 1817 and Pelletier isolated the crotonic acid .

Probably the most important achievement of the two, besides the discovery of chlorophyll, was the isolation of quinine in 1820. The industrial production of quinine goes back to Pelletier and Caventou. He built a factory in Neuilly , France , in which cinchona bark from South America was processed. Pelletier and Caventou received a 10,000 franc award from the Académie des Sciences for their work, and a memorial on the Boulevard St. Michel in Paris commemorates them both. Other natural substances that he isolated were curare and piperine in 1829 - which Hans Christian Ørsted found - and narceine (which Charles Derosne found). In 1837 he isolated toluene for the first time from gas emitted by the bark of the maritime pine (then Pinus maritima ).

Since it was founded in 1820, he was a member of the Académie de Médecine and from 1840 of the Académie des Sciences.

Honors

The genus Pelletiera A.St.-Hil. named from the plant family of the primrose family (Primulaceae). After Burkhardt, this genre is not named in his honor, but for Jacques Martial Pelletier-Sautelet (1778–1870).

Fonts (selection)

  • Analysis de l'opopanax . In: Annales de Chimie, ou Recueil de Mémoires concernant la Chimie… Volume 79, Paris 1811, pp. 90-99 (online) .
  • Analysis du galbanum . In: Bulletin de Pharmacie . Volume 4, Number 3, 1812, pp. 97-102 (online) .
  • Examination chimique de quelques substances colorantes de nature résineuse . In: Bulletin de Pharmacie et des Sciences Accessoires . Volume 6, Number 10, 1814, pp. 432-453 (online) .
  • Réflexions sur le tannin, et sur quelques combinaisons nouvelles de l'acide gallique avec des substances végétales . In: Annales de Chimie, or Recueil de Mémoires concernant la Chimie . Volume 87, Paris 1815, pp. 103-108 (online) .
  • Additions A une note sur l'acide gallique, insérée dans le dernier no des Annales . In: Annales de Chimie, or Recueil de Mémoires concernant la Chimie . Volume 87, Paris 1815, pp. 218-219 (online) .
  • Memoire sur la gomme d'olivier In: Journal de Pharmacie et des Sciences Accessoires . Volume 2, Number 8, Paris 1816, pp. 337-343 (online) .
  • Sur la matière verte des feuilles . In: Journal de Pharmacie et des Sciences Accessoires . Volume 3, Number 11, Paris 1817, pp. 486-491 (online) . - with Joseph Bienaimé Caventou
  • Sur la matière verte des feuilles . In: Annales de Chimie et de Physique . Volume 9, Paris 1818, pp. 194-196 (online) . - with Joseph Bienaimé Caventou
  • Recherches chimiques et physiologiques sur l'ipécacuanha In: Journal de Pharmacie et des Sciences Accessoires . Volume 3, Number 4, Paris 1817, pp. 145-164 (online) . - with François Magendie
  • Note sur la cafeine . In: Journal de Pharmacie et des Sciences Accessoires . Volume 12, Number 5, Paris 1826, pp. 229-233 (online) .
  • Examination of the provenant production of the traitement de la résine pour l'éclairage au gaz (Premier Mémoire) . In: Annales de Chimie et de Physique . Volume 67, Paris 1838, pp. 269-303 (online) . - with Philippe Walter

literature

  • Alex Berman: Pelletier, Pierre-Joseph . In: Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography . Volume 10, Charles Scribner's Sons, Detroit 2008, pp. 497-499 (online) .
  • Georges Dillemann: La vie de Joseph Pelletier . In: Revue d'histoire de la pharmacie. Volume 77, Numbers 281-282, 1989, pp. 128-134 (online) .
  • Paul Rossignol: Les travaux scientifiques de Joseph Pelletier . In: Revue d'histoire de la pharmacie. Volume 77, Numbers 281-282, 1989, pp. 135-152 (online)
  • Winfried Pötsch u. a .: Lexicon of important chemists . Harri Deutsch 1989.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard L. Myers: The 100 Most Important Chemical Compounds. Greenwood Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-313-33758-1 , p. 283.
  2. ^ H. Limpricht : Textbook of organic chemistry. Volume 2, CA Schwetske & Sohn, 1862, p. 791.
  3. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Pelletier, Pierre-Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chemist and pharmacist
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1788
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH July 20, 1842
Place of death Paris