Balard, Antoine Jérôme
Balard, Antoine Jérôme
Born Sept. 30, 1802, in Montpellier; died Mar. 30, 1876, in Paris. French chemist; member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1844).
Balard was a pharmacist, then a university professor in Montpellier and in Paris (beginning in 1842). In 1826, while Balard was studying the brines in Mediterranean salt mines, he discovered a new element that he named muride (from the Latin muria,“brine”). Soon afterward, J. L. Gay-Lussac renamed it bromine.