Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis

Born Dec. 6, 1778, in St. Léonard; died May 9, 1850, in Paris. French chemist and physicist; member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1806). Graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in 1800. Student of C. Berthollet. Became professor of chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique and professor of physics at the Sorbonne (Paris) in 1809 and professor of chemistry at the Paris Botanical Garden in 1832. Member of the Chamber of Deputies, where he made speeches only on scientific subjects, from 1831 to 1839. Edited the French journal Annales de chimie et de physique with D. F. Arago from 1815 to 1850. Foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1826).

In 1802, independently of J. Dalton, Gay-Lussac discovered the law of thermal expansion of gases. After la. D. Zakharov’s balloon flight for scientific purposes (June 30, 1804), Gay-Lussac made two such flights (Aug. 24, 1804, with J. Biot, and Sept. 16, 1804). During the second flight, he discovered that at an altitude of about 7,000 m the intensity of the earth’s magnetism is undiminished and established that the air has the same composition as at the earth’s surface. In 1808 he discovered the law of combining volumes in reactions between gases. During the same year, Gay-Lussac and L. Thénard developed a method for the production of potassium and sodium by heating potassium hydroxide or caustic soda to high temperatures with iron filings and produced free (impure) boron by heating boric anhydride with potassium. They also demonstrated the elemental nature of chlorine (1808) and potassium and sodium (1810). In 1813-14, simultaneously with H. Davy, Gay-Lussac demonstrated that iodine is a chemical element closely resembling chlorine, and he prepared iodine compounds, such as hydrogen iodide. Having prepared pure prussic acid (1811), Gay-Lussac recognized it as a hydrogen compound of the complex radical cyanogen. In that same year he prepared cyanogen (dicyan) from mercuric cyanide. The existence of oxygen-free acids, which Gay-Lussac proposed to call the hydrogen acids, was established at about this time.

Simultaneously with J. Berzelius and J. Döbereiner, Gay-Lussac refined organic elemental analysis (1815), using copper oxide for the combustion of organic materials.

In 1819, on the basis of his definitions, Gay-Lussac constructed the first diagrams for the solubility of salts in water and observed the existence of two separate solubility curves for anhydrous sodium sulfate and its decahydrate. From 1824 to 1832 he refined the methods of titration (alkalimetry, acidimetry, and chlorometry). In 1827 he invented a tower for absorbing the nitrogen oxides released in lead chambers during the production of sulfuric acid. The towers, which bear his name, were first used in 1842.

REFERENCES

Arago, F. Biografii znamenitykh astronomov, fizikov i geometrov, vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1860. (Translated from French.)
Giua, M. Istoria khimii. Moscow, 1966. (Translated from Italian.)
Blanc, E., and L. Delhoume. La Vie émouvante et noble de Gay-Lussac. Limoges, 1950.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis

REFERENCES

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Synonyms for Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

noun French chemist and physicist who first isolated boron and who formulated the law describing the behavior of gases under constant pressure (1778-1850)

Synonyms