Michel eugène chevreul organic chemistry

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Michel Eugène Chevreul was a French chemist whose work contributed to significant developments in science, medicine, and art.

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Michel-Eugène Chevreul

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Chemist, physicist, and philosopher, b. at Angers, France, 31 August, 1786; d. at Paris, 9 April, 1889. His father was a physician, who had himself been an investigator and had reached the age of ninety-one years. Educated in his native town at the Ecole Centrale, formerly the university, Chevreul went to Paris at the age of seventeen and obtained a place in the laboratory of Vauquelin, a chemical-manufacturer. Subsequently he became chief of this laboratory. At the age of twenty he began contributing to scientific literature, and at twenty-six had attained the rank of professor at the Lycée Charlemagne. Later he became director of the Gobelins, member of the Academy of Sciences, and was admitted to the Legion of Honour, in which he won every promotion until he ultimately received the Grand Cross. His centennial jubilee in 188

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Michel-Eugène Chevreul

(1786–1889) French organic chemist

One of the longest-lived of all chemists, Chevreul, who was born at Angers in France, studied at the Collège de France (1803). He was an assistant to Antoine François de Fourcroy (1809), assistant at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle (1810), then professor of physics at the Lycée Charlemagne (1813–30).

In 1810 Chevreul began a great program of research into fats, which was published in his book Recherches chimiques sur les corps gras d'origine animale (1823; Chemical Researches on Animal Fats). By acidification of soaps derived from animal fats and subsequent crystallization from alcohol he was able to identify for the first time various fatty acids: oleic acid, margaric acid (a mixture of stearic and palmitic acids), butyric acid, capric and caproic acids, and valeric acid. He recognized that fats are esters (called ‘ethers’ in the nomenclature of the day) of glycerol and fatty acids and that saponification produces salts of the fatty acids (soaps) and glycerol. In 1825 Chevreul and Joseph Gay-Lussac patented a process for

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Michel Eugène Chevreul

Catholic Scientist of the Past

August 31, 1786 to April 9, 1889

Michel Eugène Chevreul (August 31, 1786 to April 9, 1889) was a French chemist best known for his researches on fats and oils that inaugurated the field of organic chemistry. Chevreul started his career at the age of seventeen as an apprentice to the famed chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, later becoming his assistant at the National Museum of Natural History, and eventually succeeding him there, in 1830, as professor of organic chemistry. In 1816 he began his researches into animal fats and oils, which were published in 1823 as Recherches sur les corps gras d’origine animale. He introduced the concept of fatty acids, and isolated several types of them (oleic, stearic, and heptodecanoic). He showed that soaps resulted from a combination of a fatty acid with an alkali. His discoveries revolutionized the processes and extent of the manufacture of soaps and candles. He was the first to isolate the substance creatine and to show that diabetics excrete glucose.