Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan (; 28 September 1852 – 20 February 1907) was a French chemist and pharmacist who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds. Among his other contributions, Moissan discovered moissanite and contributed to the development of the electric arc furnace.

Biography

Early life and education

Moissan was born in Paris on 28 September 1852, the son of a minor officer of the Eastern Railway Company, Francis Ferdinand Moissan, and a seamstress, Joséphine Améraldine (née Mitel). In 1864 they moved to Meaux, where he attended the local school. During this time, Moissan became an apprentice clockmaker. However, in 1870, Moissan and his family moved back to Paris due to war against Prussia. Moissan was unable to receive the grade universitaire necessary to attend university. After spending a year in the army, he enrolled at the Ecole Superieure de Pharmacie de Paris..He was of Jewish descent and practiced the Catholic faith.

Scientific career

Moissan became a trainee in pharmacy in 1871 and in 1872 he began working for a chemist in Paris, where he was able to save a person poisoned with arsenic. He decided to study chemistry and began first in the laboratory of Edmond Frémy at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, and later in that of Pierre Paul Dehérain at the École Pratique des Haute Études. During his time in Paris he became a friend of the chemist Alexandre Léon Étard and the botanist Vasque.

His marriage, to Léonie Lugan, took place in 1882. They had a son in 1885, named Louis Ferdinand Henri.

Death

Moissan died suddenly in Paris in February 1907, shortly after his return from receiving the Nobel Prize in Stockholm. 1892 described as Professor at the Ecole

Supérieure de Pharmacie. 7, Rue Vauguelin, Paris.

Research

Moissan published his first scientific paper, about carbon dioxide and oxygen metabolism in plants, with Dehérain in 1874. He left plant physiology and then turned towards inorganic chemistry; subsequently his research on pyrophoric iron was well received by the two most prominent French inorganic chemists of that time, Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville and Jules Henri Debray. After Moissan received his Ph.D. on cyanogen and its reactions to form cyanures in 1880, his friend Landrine offered him a position at an analytic laboratory.

He had no laboratory of his own, but borrowed lab space from others, including Charles Friedel. There he had access to a strong battery consisting of 90 Bunsen cells which made it possible to observe a gas produced by the electrolysis of molten arsenic trichloride; the gas was reabsorbed by the arsenic trichloride.

Moissan eventually succeeded in isolating fluorine in 1886 by the electrolysis of a solution of potassium hydrogen difluoride (KHF<sub>2</sub>) in liquid hydrogen fluoride (HF). The mixture was necessary because hydrogen fluoride is a nonconductor. The device was built with platinum-iridium electrodes in a platinum holder and the apparatus was cooled to −50&nbsp;°C. The result was the complete separation of the hydrogen produced at the negative electrode from the fluorine produced at the positive one, first achieved on 26 June 1886. This remains the current standard method for commercial fluorine production. The French Academy of Science sent three representatives, Marcellin Berthelot, Henri Debray, and Edmond Frémy, to verify the results, but Moissan was unable to reproduce them, owing to the absence from the hydrogen fluoride of traces of potassium fluoride present in the previous experiments. After resolving the problem and demonstrating the production of fluorine several times, he was awarded a prize of 10,000 francs. For the first successful isolation, he was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. and attempted to use pressure to produce synthetic diamonds from the more common form of carbon. He also used the furnace to synthesize the borides and carbides of numerous elements.

Footnotes

See also

  • List of Jewish Nobel laureates
  • Tracy Hall - Researchers of Synthetic Diamonds

References

Further reading

  • Scientific genealogy
  • Books and letters by Henri Moissan in Europeana