Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac Biography

Dromo's Den

GAY-LUSSAC, Joseph Louis (1778-1850). One of the most distinguished chemists and physicists of the nineteenth century. He was born at Saint-Léonard le Noblat (Haute-Vienne). In 1794 he was sent to Paris and was admitted to the Ecole Polytechnique in 1797. After three years' study Berthollet, who was then professor of chemistry in the Ecole Polytechnique, selected him as his assistant at Arcueil, where the government chemical works were situated. In 1801 the young chemist published his first memoir, which treated of the dilatation of gases with rising temperature, and which was speedily followed by others, on the improvement of thermometers and barometers on vapor pressures and the determination of vapor densities, and on capillary action. In association with Biot, he was commissioned by the Institute of France to employ a balloon for observations, with the view to ascertaining whether magnetic force existed at considerable heights above the surface of the earth or only on the surface, as had been asserted by some physicists, and made two important ascents. Alexander von Humboldt investigated with him the properties of air brought down from a height of more than 23,000 feet, and their joint, memoir to the Academy of Sciences (read on Oct. 1, 1804) contained the first announcement of the fact that oxygen and hydrogen unite to form water in the simple proportion of one volume of the former to two volumes of the latter. The simplicity of the ratio in which these gases stood to each other in their combining proportions induced Gay-Lussac to study the combining volumes of other gases and thus led him to the important discovery of the law of volumes, which was announced in 1808 and is one of the most general and important laws in the whole domain of chemistry. In 1809 he was made professor of chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique. Davy's discoveries of potassium and sodium, by the decomposing action of the electric current, having excited much attention in France, Napoleon directed Gay-Lussac and Thénard to pursue this class of researches. The results of their investigations appeared in two volumes, under the title Recherches physicochimiques, in 1811. Among the most important of the discoveries announced in these volumes were a new chemical process which yielded potassium much more abundantly than the electrolytic method, the isolation of boron, and new and improved methods of analyzing organic compounds. Gay-Lussac was also the first to obtain hydriodic and iodic acids and cyanogen. He, further, investigated the manufacture of hydrated sulphuric acid, bleaching chlorides, alcohols, and alkalies employed in commerce. In 1805 he was chosen a member of the Committee of Arts and Manufactures, established by the Minister of Commerce. In 1818 he was appointed to superintend the government manufactory of gunpowder and saltpetre, and in 1829 he received the lucrative office of chief assayer to the mint, where he introduced several important improvements. In 1831 he became a member of the Chamber of Deputies, in 1832 professor of chemistry at the Jardin des Plantes, and in 1839 he was made a peer of France. He never took an active part in politics and was diligently engaged in scientific research until his last illness. From 1816 he was coeditor of the Annales de chimie et de physique, in which many of his original memoirs were published. He also wrote Cours de physique (1827), Leçons de chimie (2 vols., 1828), and other works. Consult American Journal of Science (New Haven, 1850), and Biot and Gardeur le Brun, Notices biographiques sur Gay-Lassac (Chàlons, 1850).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. IX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 527.