Vocation : Science : Chemistry

Jules Henri Debray (26 July 1827, in Amiens – 19 July 1888, in Paris) was a French chemist.
In 1847 he began his studies at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and several years later became an instructor at the Lycée Charlemagne (1855). From 1875 onward, he taught classes in chemistry at the École Normale Supérieure, where in 1881 he succeeded Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville as professor of chemistry.He is best remembered for his collaborative research with Sainte-Claire Deville involving the properties of platinum metals, in particular, the melting of platinum and its alloys. Their process for melting platinum remained the chosen method until induction furnaces became available decades later. In 1860, the two scientists were the first to melt an appreciable quantity of iridium.During his career, Debray served as an assayer for the Bureau de Garantie of Paris, was vice-president of the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale and was a member of the Académie des sciences.

Ernst Julius Cohen ForMemRS (7 March 1869 – 6 March 1944) was a Dutch Jewish chemist known for his work on the allotropy of metals. Cohen studied chemistry under Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm, Henri Moissan at Paris, and Jacobus van't Hoff at Amsterdam. In 1893 he became Van't Hoff's assistant and in 1902 he became professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Utrecht, a position which he held until his retirement in 1939. Throughout his life, Cohen studied the allotropy of tin.
Cohen's areas of research included polymorphism of both elements and compounds, photographic chemistry, electrochemistry, pizeochemistry, and the history of science. He published more than 400 papers and numerous books.In 1913 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1926. Following the 29 April 1942 decree that Dutch Jews wear the yellow badge, he was arrested by Nazi police for non-compliance and forced to resign.According to Margit Szöllösi-Janze, in her book, Science in the Third Reich, Cohen "put great efforts into restoring the relationships of Western European scientists with their German colleagues after the First World War."
He was killed on 6 March 1944 in a gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp.

Georges Augustin Albert Charpy (1 September 1865 – 25 November 1945) was the French scientist who created the Charpy impact test. He attended École Polytechnique from 1885 to 1887 and graduated with a degree in Marine Artillery. In 1887 he became a professor at École Monge. In 1892 he published his physics thesis. In 1920 he became a professor of metallurgy at École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. In 1922 he became the professor of general chemistry at École Polytechnique.

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 (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.

Gabriel Bertrand (born 17 May 1867 in Paris, died 20 June 1962 in Paris) was a French pharmacologist, biochemist and bacteriologist.
Bertrand introduced into biochemistry both the term “oxidase” and the concept of trace elements.
The laccase, a polyphenol oxidase and an enzyme oxidating urishiol and laccol obtained from the lacquer tree, was first studied by Gabriel Bertrand in 1894.Bertrand's rule refers to the fact that the dose–response curve for many micronutrients is non-monotonic, having an initial stage of increasing benefits with increased intake, followed by increasing costs as excesses become toxic. In 2005, Raubenheimer et al. fed excess carbohydrates to Spodoptera littoralis and extended Bertrand's rule to macronutrients.In 1894, with Césaire Phisalix, he developed an antivenom for use against snake bites.Bertrand was made a member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine in 1931. In 1932 he became foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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.

Arie Jan Haagen-Smit (December 22, 1900 – March 17, 1977) was a Dutch chemist. He is best known for linking the smog in Southern California to automobiles and is therefore known by many as the "father" of air pollution control. After serving as an original board member of the Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board, formed in 1960 to combat the smog, Dr. Haagen-Smit became the California Air Resources Board's first chairman in 1968. Shortly before his death in Pasadena, California, of lung cancer, the Air Resources Board's El Monte Laboratory was named after him.

Georges Claude (24 September 1870 – 23 May 1960) was a French engineer and inventor. He is noted for his early work on the industrial liquefaction of air, for the invention and commercialization of neon lighting, and for a large experiment on generating energy by pumping cold seawater up from the depths. He has been considered by some to be "the Edison of France". Claude was an active collaborator with the German occupiers of France during the Second World War, for which he was imprisoned in 1945 and stripped of his honors.