Eugène-Anatole Demarçay (1 January 1852 Demarçay studied under Jean Baptiste Dumas (1800–1884)
Career
Demarçay's interests moved from organic chemistry to organometallics and then to inorganic chemistry. He applied for a professorial position at the Académie des Sciences in 1878, but was not accepted.
In 1896, he suspected that samples of the recently discovered element samarium were contaminated with another unknown element, predicting that it would be located between samarium and gadolinium. To obtain pure enough samples, he developed a new separation technique involving crystallization of double magnesium nitrate salts. By 1901, he had isolated samples of sufficient purity to confirm the isolation of europium.
In 1898, using his skills of spectroscopy, he helped Marie and Pierre Curie confirm the isolation of a new element, radium. After extracting polonium from pitchblende they observed that the remaining sample was still radioactive. They consulted Demarçay, who reported a line in the spectrograph indicative of a new element.
Awards
- 1881, Jecker Prix, Section de Chimie de l'Académie des Sciences for contributions to organic chemistry
Publications
- Spectres électriques. Atlas; Eugène Demarçay; Paris : Gauthier-Villars, 1895.
- Sur les acides tétrique et oxytétrique et leurs homologues; Eugène Demarçay; Paris : Gauthier-Villars, 1880.