Sainte-Claire Deville,

Sainte-Claire Deville, HENRI ÉTIENNE, French chemist, was born on 11th March 1818, in St Thomas, West Indies, and was educated in Paris. In 1844 he was commissioned to organise the Faculty of Sciences at Besançon, and in 1851 obtained the chair of Chemistry in the Normal School at Paris, and shortly afterwards the similar chair to the Sorbonne. He died in Paris on 1st July 1881. He began his work as a chemical investigator by inquiring into the composition of certain resins, but soon transferred his energies to the investigation of metallurgic substances. It was Sainte-Claire Deville who first produced aluminium (1855) and platinum in commercial quantities, and demonstrated the general theory of the dissociation of chemical compounds at a high temperature. Amongst other results that were due to his skill and ingenuity, he discovered (1849) anhydrous nitric acid; examined the forms of boron and silicon; devised methods for fusing platinum, iridium, cobalt, &c.; determined the density of metallic vapours at exceedingly high temperatures; produced artificially sapphire, aluminium, and similar substances; and invented a way of getting crystallised oxides. His labours for producing globules of aluminium, which he exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1855, were in continuation of Wöhler's, dating from 1827. The platinum metals he studied along with Debray. His papers were published in Comptes Rendus of the Academy of Sciences, and in Annales de Chimie. He also published De l'Aluminium (Paris, 1859), and Métallurgie du Platine (2 vols. 1863).