19th-century French chemists

Marie-Adolphe_Carnot

Marie Adolphe Carnot (27 January 1839 – 20 June 1920) was a French chemist, mining engineer and politician. He came from a distinguished family: his father, Hippolyte Carnot, and brother, Marie François Sadi Carnot, were politicians, the latter becoming President of the third French Republic.
He was born in Paris and studied at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines. He became a member of the Corps des mines, and from 1864 to 1867, served as a mining engineer in Limoges. From 1868 to 1877 he was a professor of preparatory courses and general chemistry at the École des Mines in Paris, where from 1877 to 1901, he worked as a professor of analytical chemistry.In 1881 he was appointed Chief Engineer of Mines, and in 1894, was named Inspector General of Mines. He became director of the École des Mines in 1901, a post he held until 1907. Aside from administrative work and teaching and training many engineers, he wrote a treatise on the chemical analysis of minerals (Traité d'analyse des substances minérales, published 1898) and pursued research. The uranium ore carnotite is named after him.He was honoured with membership of the Académie d'Agriculture (1884) and Académie des sciences (1895), and was made a Commander of the Légion d'honneur (1903). He also pursued a political career.

Émile_Bourquelot

Émile Bourquelot (21 June 1851 – 26 January 1921) was a French chemist, and professor of pharmacy at the University of Paris. He was born in Jandun (Ardennes, France), to a farmer, and was the eldest of three sons. Bourquelot became the Chief Pharmacist at the Laënnec Hospital in 1887, where he established a laboratory to conduct his research into carbohydrate chemistry. Bourquelot and other French pharmacists pioneered the study of plant glycosides, molecules in which a sugar is bound to a non-carbohydrate part. They developed methods to stabilize these compounds in solution, and detect them enzymatically. He died at the age of 70 on 26 January 1921 of pneumonia.
The French Academy of Sciences awarded him the Prix Montagne for 1897.

Alexandre_Baudrimont

Alexandre Edouard Baudrimont (7 May 1806 – 24 January 1880) was a 19th-century French professor of chemistry who published various books connected to the sciences, languages and the Basque Country (in particular Erromintxela):

Dictionnaire de l'industrie manufacturière, commerciale et agricole (1837, Paris)
Recherches anatomiques et physiologiques sur le développement du fœtus: et en particulier sur l'évolution embryonnaire des oiseaux et des batraciens (with Martin Saint-Ange, G.J.) (1846)
Histoire des Basques ou Escualdunais primitifs, restaurée d'après la langue, les caractères ethnologiques et les mœurs des Basques actuels (1854, Paris)
Vocabulaire de la langue des Bohémiens habitant les Pays Basque Français (1862, Bordeaux)In the field of science he is best known for first preparation of Na3P in the mid-19th century by reacting molten sodium with phosphorus pentachloride.

Philippe_Barbier

Philippe Antoine Francoise Barbier (2 March 1848 – 18 September 1922) was a French organic chemist. He is best known for his two named reactions in organic synthesis, the Barbier reaction and the Barbier-Wieland degradation, as well as for his role in the creation of organomagnesium reagents with his student, Victor Grignard.
Although Grignard was awarded the Nobel prize in 1912 (along with Sabatier) for his discovery, Barbier and Sabatier’s collaborator, Senderens, were snubbed. Grignard himself decried this as an injustice, writing to a friend just days after returning from his Nobel acceptance: “…to tell the truth, and between us, I would even have preferred to wait a little longer, to see the prize shared between Sabatier and Senderens, and then share it myself with Barbier at a later time”. Nevertheless, Barbier’s contributions to the scientific community were plentiful and varied, including work in mineralogy, natural products isolation, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Eugène-Melchior_Péligot

Eugène-Melchior Péligot (24 March 1811 – 15 April 1890), also known as Eugène Péligot, was a French chemist who isolated the first sample of uranium metal in 1841.Péligot proved that the black powder of Martin Heinrich Klaproth was not a pure metal (it was an oxide of uranium, known in chemistry as UO2). He then succeeded in producing pure uranium metal by reducing uranium tetrachloride (UCl4) with potassium metal. Today better methods have been found.
Péligot was a professor of analytical chemistry at the Institut National Agronomique. He collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Dumas, and together they discovered the methyl radical during experiments on wood spirit (methanol). The terminology "methyl alcohol" was created by both chemists from "wood wine". They also prepared the gaseous dimethyl ether, and many esters. In 1838, they successfully transformed camphor into p-cymene using phosphorus pentoxide.
In 1844 he synthesized chromium(II) acetate, which was much later recognized (by F. Albert Cotton in 1964) to be the first chemical compound which contains a quadruple bond.

Jean-Baptiste_Guimet

Jean-Baptiste Guimet (20 July 1795 – 8 April 1871), French industrial chemist, and inventor of synthetic colors, was born at Voiron, Isère.
He studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris, and in 1817 entered the Administration des Poudres et Salpêtres. As natural lazurite was expensive and inaccessible, different options for its artificial production were explored in Europe. Jean Baptiste Guimet discovered a synthetic route in 1826. He finally prepared the synthetic lazurite, called ultramarine in 1828. It was also called as French ultramarine.
In 1828 he was awarded the prize offered by the Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale for a process of making artificial ultramarine with all the properties of the substance prepared from expensive natural source lapis lazuli; and six years later he resigned his official position in order to devote himself to the commercial production of that material, a factory for which he established at Fleurieu-sur-Saône.His son Émile Étienne Guimet succeeded him in the direction of the factory.

Paul-Émile_Lecoq_de_Boisbaudran

Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, also called François Lecoq de Boisbaudran (18 April 1838 – 28 May 1912), was a French chemist known for his discoveries of the chemical elements gallium, samarium and dysprosium. He developed methods for separation and purification of the rare earth elements and was one of the pioneers of the science of spectroscopy.

Henry_Louis_Le_Chatelier

Henry Louis Le Chatelier (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi lwi lə ʃɑtəlje]; 8 October 1850 – 17 September 1936) was a French chemist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He devised Le Chatelier's principle, used by chemists and chemical engineers to predict the effect a changing condition has on a system in chemical equilibrium.