Abstract
ON May 10 occurs the centenary of the birth of the distinguished French chemist, Francois Marie Raoult. The son of a customs officer, he was educated at Laon and Paris, became a teacher, held various appointments at Rheims and elsewhere, and in 1870, at the age of forty, succeeded to the chair of chemistry at Grenoble, where the remainder of his life was passed. His earliest researches were largely connected with the phenomena of the voltaic cell, but his name is best known for his work on solutions, which occupied the last two decades of his life. His first paper on the depression of the freezing points of liquids by the presence of substances dissolved in them was published in 1878. Continued experiments with various solvents led him to the discovery of a simple relation between the molecular weights of sub stances and the freezing-point of the solvent which he expressed in the “loi générale de la congélation”. He also studied the diminution of the vapour pressure of a solvent caused by dissolving a substance in it, and his important work in these directions was afterwards used by such eminent investigators as van 't Hoff and Ostwald in support of the hypothesis of electrolytic dissociation in solutions. An account of his work was given in a memorial lecture in 1902 by van 't Hoff before the Chemical Society, of which Raoult had been elected a foreign member in 1898. A modest, retiring, and dignified man, he lived mainly for his work, the value of which was recognised by the award of prizes by the Paris Academy of Sciences and of the Davy Medal of the Royal Society. His death took place on April 1, 1901.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
[News and Views]. Nature 125, 679–684 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125679c0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125679c0