Abstract
PROF. JOSEPH RIBAN, honorary professor of the Faculty of Sciences of Paris, who has just died at the ripe age of eighty, was one of a type of French chemists which is fast disappearing. Born at Montpeilier, he was originally destined for a career in medicine, but under the influence of Balard, the discoverer of bromine, he was led to interest himself in problems connected with pharmacological chemistry, and took up the study of the toxic principle of redoul (Coriaria myrtifolia), which he found to be a glucoside and named conanmyrtine. His work on the physiological, chemical, and physical properties of the new substance occupied him during the greater part of 1864, and the results appeared in a couple of memoirs which were published in the Journal de Pharmacie and in the Bulletins of the Chemical Society of Paris. Although he continued to follow medicine, Riban was more and more attracted to chemistry, and his nomination as professor of chemistry and technology at the Ecole Normale of Cluny eventually settled his career. In 1869 he joined his old master Balard at Paris as preparateur of his course at the College de France.
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Prof. Joseph Riban . Nature 99, 247 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/099247a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/099247a0