19th-century French chemists

Camille Alphonse Faure (21 May 1840, Vizille – 14 September 1898) was a French chemical engineer who in 1881 significantly improved the design of the lead-acid battery, which had been invented by Gaston Planté in 1859. Faure's improvements greatly increased the capacity of such batteries and led directly to their manufacture on an industrial scale. The patents were assigned to the Société La Force et la Lumière. The right to use these patents in the British Isles were sold to the Faure Electric Accumulator Company on 29 March 1881. Faure was a consultant engineer with William Edward Ayrton for this company.

René Prudent Patrice Dagron (17 March 1817 – 13 June 1900) was a French photographer and inventor. He was born in Aillières-Beauvoir, Sarthe, France.
On 21 June 1859, Dagron was granted the first microfilm patent in history. Dagron is also considered the inventor of the miniature photographic jewels (French: Bijoux photographiques microscopiques) known as Stanhopes because a modified Stanhope lens is used to view the microscopic picture attached to the lens. He is buried at Ivry Cemetery, Ivry-sur-Seine.

Joseph Bienaimé Caventou (30 June 1795 – 5 May 1877) was a French pharmacist. He was a professor at the École de Pharmacie (School of Pharmacy) in Paris. He collaborated with Pierre-Joseph Pelletier in a Parisian laboratory located behind an apothecary. He was a pioneer in the use of mild solvents to isolate a number of active ingredients from plants, making a study of alkaloids from vegetables. Among their successes were the isolation of the following compounds:

Quinine sulfate later proved to be an important remedy for the disease malaria. Quinine is the active anti-malarial ingredient in the bark of cinchona tree.Neither of the partners chose to patent their discovery of this compound, releasing it for everybody to use. In 1823 they discovered nitrogen in alkaloid compounds. Other compounds they discovered include colchicine and veratrine.
The crater Caventou on the Moon is named after him.

François-Vincent Raspail, L.L.D., M.D. (25 January 1794 – 7 January 1878) was a French chemist, naturalist, physician, physiologist, attorney, and socialist politician.

Paul Ulrich Villard (28 September 1860 – 13 January 1934) was a French chemist and physicist. He discovered gamma rays in 1900 while studying the radiation emanating from radium.

Jacques Rose Ferdinand Émile Sarrau (Perpignan 24 June 1837 – Saint-Yrieix 10 May 1904) was a French chemist. He worked most of his career at the laboratory in the Dépôt Central des Poudres et Salpêtres (Central Depot for Powder and Saltpetre). He did research on explosive shock waves, the effects of explosives and he developed new explosives. The Mach number was sometimes called in French the Nombre de Sarrau (Sarrau number).

Charles Achille Müntz (10 August 1846 – 20 February 1917) was a French agricultural chemist.

Arthème Camille Matignon (French pronunciation: [kamij matiɲɔ̃]; 3 January 1867 – 18 March 1934) was a French chemist noted for his work in thermochemistry. He was a member of the Académie des Sciences, President of the French Chemical Society and an honorary Fellow of the British Chemical Society.

Léon-Gervais-Marie Maquenne (2 December 1853 – 10 January 1925) was a French chemist and plant physiologist born in Paris.
From 1871 he worked in the laboratory of agricultural chemistry at the Ecole d'agriculture in Grignon. Here, he was a student of Pierre Paul Dehérain (1830-1902). In 1883 he became préparateur at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, where from 1885 to 1898 he served as an assistant to the chair of Physiologie végétale. In 1898 he succeeded Georges Ville (1824-1897) as chair of Physique végétale, a position he held on to until 1925. In 1904 he became a member of the Académie des sciences.
Among Maquenne's contributions was research involving the chemical make-up of sugar alcohols. He was able to resolve the chemical constitution of inositol and demonstrated it to be a hexahydroxycyclohexane.He is credited with invention of the so-called "Maquenne block", an apparatus used for determining the melting point of chemical compounds.

Clément Georges Lemoine (16 January 1841 in Tonnerre – 13 November 1922 in Paris) was a French chemist and hydrologist. He was the father of geologist Paul Lemoine (1878–1940).
He studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des ponts et chaussées, obtaining a doctorate in physical sciences in 1865. For many years he was associated with the École Polytechnique in Paris, where he ultimately served as a professor of chemistry from 1898 to 1911.In 1866 he began work as an engineer in charge of hydrometric services in the Seine Basin. In 1881 he was appointed chief engineer of bridges and roads, and in 1901, was named inspector general of bridges and roads. He is credited with organizing a flood warning service throughout France.As a chemist he discovered phosphorus sesquisulfide, a compound that will later be used in the manufacture of matches. He continued research on the allotropic transformation of phosphorus, and was also the author of works on chemical equilibria.In 1899 he became a member of the Académie des sciences (chemistry section), of which in 1921, he was named its president.