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251 [377] GREGOR
VAUQUELIN [379] Pons, born of poor parents, received a rather sketchy education. He joined the observatory in Marseille in 1789, but only as janitor. Eventually he earned a position as observer. In 1819 he left for Italy, where he spent his last years as di rector of an observatory in Florence. He was an ardent hunter of comets, as ardent as ever Messier [305] had been. Indeed, he was called the comet-chaser. He discovered thirty-seven comets and several bear his name to this day, nota bly the Pons-Brookes and the Pons-Win- necke. His most interesting discovery was made in 1818 when he detected a comet that proved to have the shortest period of any discovered before or since. How ever, it does not bear his name, but that of Encke [475], who worked out its orbit the following year. [377] GREGOR, William English mineralogist Born: Trewarthenick, Cornwall, December 25, 1761 Died: Creed, Cornwall, luly 11, 1817
Like Priestley [312], Gregor was a minister who discovered an element. He graduated from Cambridge in 1783 and entered his ministerial duties in 1787, becoming rector of Creed in 1793. He attended some lectures on science and grew interested in mineralogy, aban doning, like his American contemporary Fulton [385], a promising artistic ability. Thereafter he analyzed as many odd minerals as he could find and in 1791 discovered the new element that four years later was named titanium by Klap roth [335]. [378] RICHTER, Jeremias Benjamin (rikh'ter) German chemist
Jelenia Gora, Poland), March 10, 1762
Richter joined the Prussian army in 1778 but studied chemistry in his spare time. When he left the army in 1785, he went to the University of Königsberg, where he studied mathematics and may have attended lectures by Kant [293]. He received his Ph.D. in 1789. He made a small living as a chemist but never held an academic position. He died of tuberculosis when he was forty-five, just when Prussia had been catastrophically defeated by Napoleon and was at a low point in its history. Richter was powerfully influenced by Kant’s contention that science is applied mathematics and spent his time trying to find mathematical relationships in chem istry. He was convinced that substances reacted with each other in fixed pro portions, a sort of offshoot of the ideas of Proust [364], He was most successful in demon strating, in 1791, that adds and bases, in neutralizing each other to form salts, do so in fixed proportions. Such reaction in fixed proportions is called stoichiometry, and Richter was the first to establish it, making it the basis of quantitative chem ical analysis for some two and a half centuries. [379] VAUQUELIN, Louis Nicolas (voh-klan') French chemist Born: St. André, Hébertôt, Cal vados, May 16, 1763 Died: St. André, Hébertôt, No vember 14, 1829 The son of a peasant, Vauquelin la bored in the fields. His aptitude for stud ies was noted by the village priest, who helped him to obtain a post in an apoth ecary’s shop and later go to Paris. Through one of the Paris apothecaries for whom he worked, he was brought to the attention of Fourcroy [366], who made him an assistant. Vauquelin never forgot this and in later years provided the same sponsoring kindness for Thénard [416], another peasant’s son. Vauquelin left France temporarily during the worst of the Terror in 1793 and 1794. This was a prudent move, for he had rescued a soldier from a rioting mob and might well have been guillo tined if he had stayed. 252 25. D alton
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27. A n d r e M . A m pe r e 26. T hom as Y oung 28. S ir H umphry D avy 29. J ö n s J. B e r z e l iu s 30. M ichael
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39. A bbé G regor J. M en d el 38. H e r m a n n L. F. von H elm h o l tz 40. Louis P asteur
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von S tradonitz 45. D m itri I. M en d e le ev 44. J am es C lerk M a x w ell [380] KIRCHHOF
GOODRICKE [381] In 1797 Vauquelin made the dis coveries for which he is most famous. In a Siberian mineral he located a new metal, which was named chromium, a name suggested by Fourcroy from the Greek word for color because of the many colors of its compounds. Vauque lin just beat out Klaproth [335] with this discovery, for Klaproth repeated the work independently within months. Vauquelin also recognized the exis tence of the element beryllium in the gems beryl and emerald, although he did not actually isolate it. His interest in that direction had been sparked by studies on the two crystal forms by Haiiy [332] and it was Wohler [515], a generation later, who actually isolated the metal. In another direction, Vauquelin iso lated the compound asparagine from asparagus in 1806. Eventually it proved to be one of the amino acids that occur in proteins, the first to be discovered. In 1811 Fourcroy died and Vauquelin succeeded to his post as professor of chemistry. Fourcroy’s maiden sisters re mained with Vauquelin, who never mar ried, and he returned their care for him when he was young by taking care of them when they were old. In 1827 he was elected to the French legislature. [380] KIRCHHOF, Gottlieb Sigismund Constantin (kirkhTiuf) German-Russian chemist
Schwerin, February 19, 1764 Died: St. Petersburg (now Lenin grad), Russia, February 14, 1833 Kirchhof, the son of a pharmacist, worked with his father and then at other pharmacies, qualifying as an apothecary. In 1792 he moved to St. Petersburg, working in that capacity. Kirchhof developed methods of use in industrial chemistry, working out a method for refining vegetable oil, for in stance, and established a large factory for the purpose that prepared two tons of refined oil a day, and that prospered. His most important work, however, consisted of the treatment of starch with sulfuric acid, something that brought about the hydrolysis of the large mole cule into its small glucose units. (Glu cose is the commonest of the “simple sugars.”) This amounted to the discovery of glucose and was also the first use of a controlled catalytic reaction, since sul furic acid brought about the hydrolysis of starch without being consumed in the process, something Berzelius [425] was to name “catalysis.” Kirchhof’s work laid the foundation for the scientific study of the processes of brewing and fermentation. [381] GOODRICKE, John English astronomer
September 17, 1764 Died: York, England, April 20, 1786
Goodricke, the son of an English dip lomat serving in the Netherlands, is a most unusual case. He was a deaf-mute from birth, or possibly as the result of a very early illness, and barely lived past his twenty-first birthday. Yet, with that disability and with so short a life, he managed to make a first-rate discovery. Goodricke studied the star Algol, the brightest star to show noticeable varia tions in its light. (It is a “variable star.”) To those who followed Aristotle’s [29] dictum that the heavenly bodies were changeless, this variation in light was un settling. Perhaps the variation accounted for the fact that its name, which is Arabic, means “the ghoul” and that the Greeks built the constellation of Perseus about it, making Algol represent the head of the demon Medusa. The young deaf-mute studied the light variations without mystic uneasiness. He was the first to show that the variations were quite regular and, in 1782, when he was not quite eighteen, he suggested that an invisible companion star periodi cally eclipsed Algol and diminished the light we could see. It was a daring sug gestion for so young a man to make and an “invisible star” was indeed an anom aly; but Goodricke’s idea, in the end, turned out to be entirely right, as Vogel [757] was to show a century later.
[382] DEL RIO
NIEPCE [384] [382] DEL RIO, Andres Manuel (del- ree'oh) Spanish-Mexican mineralogist Born: Madrid, November 10, 1764
Died: Mexico City, March 23, 1849
Del Rio graduated from the University of Alcala de Henares in 1781, and went on to study at the Academy of Mines at Almaden with a subsidy from the enlightened Charles III, who was trying (vainly) to bring Spain into the main stream of European science. Del Rio’s aptitude for study and inter est in mining and mineralogy was such, during his Spanish school days, that he was sent to study in France, England, and Germany at government expense. He studied under Werner [355], the nep tunist, and there made friends with young Humboldt [397]. During the worst of the French Revo lution he was in Paris and was nearly marked off for the guillotine because of his too-close association with Lavoisier [334]. In 1794 the Spanish government sent him to Mexico City to take up a professorship at the School of Mines that had been established by D’Elhuyar [367], He was to remain there for half a cen tury, staying on, unlike D’Elhuyar, after Mexico had gained its independence. In 1801 he discovered what he thought was a new metal in a lead ore and named it erythronium. However, other chemists thought erythronium was really chromium, which had been discov ered three years earlier by Vauquelin [379]. Del Rio let himself be persuaded and abandoned his claim of having dis covered a new metal. When Sefstrom [451] discovered vanadium, Wohler [515] showed it to be identical with Del Rio’s erythronium, but by then it was too late. Sefstrom is now usually given the credit for the discovery. [383] HATCHETT, Charles English chemist Born: London, January 2, 1765 Died: Chelsea, March 10, 1847 In 1801 Hatchett, the son of a pros perous coach builder, analyzed an un usual mineral that had originally been found in the colony of Connecticut and had been sent to England by the colonial governor. Hatchett reported a new metal in the mineral and named it columbium in honor of its having been found in Co lumbia, the poetic synonym for the new nation of the United States. In 1809 Wollaston [388] analyzed another por tion and declared columbium to be iden tical with Ekeberg’s [391] tantalum. The Wollaston view won out and Hatchett re tired from research, either out of anger or out of sheer uninterest. In 1846 it was finally proved that the metal Hatchett had discovered was truly a new metal and not identical with tantalum. Wollas ton and Ekeberg were both dead by then, but Hatchett was still alive—and vindicated. Columbium in its rediscovery was, however, given the name niobium (after Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus), though for a century Americans stub bornly clung to columbium. An interna tional agreement in recent years has es tablished the name officially as niobium, so in the long run poor Hatchett lost out. After his father died, Hatchett, no longer a chemist, took over the family business and was coach builder to the king.
[384] NIEPCE, Joseph Nicéphore (nyeps)
French inventor Born: Chalôns, Saône-et-Loire, March 7, 1765 Died: Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, near Chalôns, July 5, 1833 Niepce was the son of a wealthy law yer suspected of royalist sympathies. The family fled the French Revolution but young Niepce returned to serve in Napo leon’s army till ill health forced his dis charge.
In 1813 he grew interested in lithog raphy, a form of art that involved the placing of greased designs on stone. Niepce had no artistic talent of his own and his son made the designs. When that son was called up for military service, 254 [385] FULTON
FULTON [385] Niepce began to try to produce designs automatically. His interest shifted to such automatic production as an end in itself. He tried, at first, to have the sun darken silver chloride, so that reflected sunlight could produce an imitation of the design it formed itself in the process of reflection. Essentially he was trying to produce a light-dark pattern that imi tated nature; i.e. a photograph. He produced the first object we might call a primitive photograph in 1822 (and it is now in a collection at the University of Texas). In 1827 he submitted one to the Royal Society, one which had re quired an eight-hour exposure. He tried to interest George IV in this, but any thing that required so much time had to remain no more than a curiosity, and Niepce’s efforts merely drove him to ward bankruptcy. That process was ac celerated by the fact that his brother, who was in partnership with him, was insane and had wasted money on imagi nary projects. Daguerre [467] was doing similar work and in 1829 economic necessity forced Niepce into partnership with him. Daguerre eventually succeeded but Niepce died of apoplexy too soon to see that success. [385] FULTON, Robert American inventor
ton), Pennsylvania, November 14, 1765
February 24, 1815 Fulton, the son of a farmer, was left fatherless at three. He began life as a jeweler’s apprentice and then as an artist. Franklin [272] sat for a portrait by him in Philadelphia. In 1786 he traveled to England to study. There he made friends with engineers and his own interest in engineering and invention was stimu lated, so that, though he was reasonably successful in art, he abandoned it for civil engineering. It was the great age of canal building in England (an age to which the coming of the railroad a half century later was to put an end) and Fulton investigated methods of improv ing canal navigation. From this his mind naturally traveled to the possibility of powering water transportation by steam. In 1797 he went to France where he made friends with Laplace [347] and where for seven years he attempted to devise a workable submarine. (His best submarine, built in 1801, he called the Nautilus, a name that was to inspire Jules Verne seventy years later and, via Verne, the American navy a century and a half later.) For a while the French government was interested in these attempts, thinking that submarines might offer a way of de stroying the British navy. However, tests were disappointing and the French lost interest. The British hired Fulton, and they were disappointed too, although on the advice of men such as Cavendish [307] and Banks [331] they subsidized him handsomely. Meanwhile Fulton had tried to launch a surface vessel that was propelled by a paddle wheel powered by a steam en gine, but experiments on the Seine with such a vessel failed. When he returned to the United States in 1806 he resumed tests and in 1807 built the Clermont, 150 feet long. This vessel performed well, steaming up the Hudson from New York to Albany in thirty-two hours, so that it maintained an average speed of nearly five miles an hour. Soon he had a fleet of steamships in operation. Fulton’s fortune was made but most of it was spent on patent litigation, on sub marine projects and so on. Steam was not quite up to helping the United States in the War of 1812, but it was in the minds of American naval men. Fulton died of pneumonia after working in bad weather on the open decks of a steam warship he was con structing, and was given a state funeral. The War of 1812 had ended two months before.
Fulton is generally considered the in ventor of the steamship and when the Hall of Fame for Great Americans was established in 1900 he was included. Ac tually the Clermont was not the first workable steamship. John Fitch [330] 255 [386] WHITNEY
WHITNEY [386] more nearly deserves credit for the in vention. However, Fulton was the first to make steamships profitable and a perma nent feature of the world scene. Nor was the feat a minor one. By free ing sea travel from the tyranny of the wind and the brutality of the oar, Fulton carried through the first of several revo lutions in transportation that were to end by making no part of the earth more than a few hours away from any other part. [386] WHITNEY, Eli American inventor Born: Westboro, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765 Died: New Haven, Connecticut, January 8, 1825 Whitney, the son of a farmer who served as a justice of the peace, was the model of the ingenious Yankee gadge- teer. He might indeed have been the very Connecticut Yankee Mark Twain invented a century later and sent to King Arthur’s court. Whitney’s skill at making and patching contrivances kept him in pocket money and helped him through Yale University. After graduation in 1792 he traveled to Savannah, Georgia, as a teacher, with the intention of studying law. There he met the widow of the Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene and lived on her plantation while studying law. She recognized young Whitney’s ability, which he had demonstrated by working out a few household gadgets for her, and introduced him to some gentlemen who were concerned about the South’s cotton industry. Cotton was a valuable substance that could mean wealth for the South, but it was difficult to pluck the cotton fibers off the seeds to which they were attached. It seemed to Whitney that it would be easy to devise metal projections to do this. In April 1793 he invented the cotton gin (“gin” being short for “engine”). Metal wires poked through slats, entangled themselves in the cotton fibers and pulled them free. One gin could produce fifty pounds of cleaned cotton per day. Rarely has such a device had such grave and even catastrophic effects. Slav ery was dying out in the United States, even in the South, because slavery is no match economically for free labor plus machinery. The cotton gin, however, made cotton growing big business and slavery seemed eminently suitable for the cotton plantations. Slavery revived, grew, and strengthened, and the South went to war rather than give up its “peculiar in stitution” peaceably. The American Civil War might never have been fought but for the cotton gin. Fortified by a $50,000 grant awarded him by the legislature of South Carolina, Whitney returned to New England to manufacture the gin. However, the de vice was so simple to manufacture and the principle so easy to copy that he spent the grant and all profits on protect ing his patent and in the end he reaped no financial reward. In 1798 he obtained a contract to manufacture ten thousand muskets for the government and in the process of fulfilling it he produced a second inven tion, more subtle than the first and just as important. Up to that time, every musket (and, indeed, every device consisting of more than one part) had to be made by hand, with each part adjusted to fit the adjoin ing part. If a part was broken, a new one had to be manually adjusted. A corre sponding part from a similar device would not necessarily (and, in fact, vir tually never did) replace the broken part without adjustment. Whitney, however, machined his parts with such precision that a particular part could replace any other one of that type. The story is that in 1801 he brought some muskets disassembled and threw them down at the feet of the government official. “There are your muskets,” he said and, picking out parts at random, put together a working musket. This time he made a fortune and kept it. He introduced division of labor in his factories and was thus the grandfather of mass production, something that Henry Ford [929] was to make a living reality a century later. Whitney was one of the charter members of the Hall of Fame 2 5 6
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