Abstract
ON September 6 occurs the centenary of the death of the once famous Belgian chemist and horticulturist Jean-Baptiste Van Mons who died at Louvain in 1842 at the age of seventy-six after a life entirely devoted to science. Born in Brussels on November 11, 1765, when Belgium was under foreign domination, he lived to see Austrian rule give way to French and French to Dutch, and then in 1830 to see his country gain her independence. But under every regime Van Mons steadily continued his work and it was largely through his labours that discoveries made in France became known in the countries with which she was so frequently at war. By profession Van Mons was a pharmacist, but when twenty years of age he wrote an essay on the new principles of chemistry and he subsequently corresponded with Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Monge Hachette and others. By the French authorities he was entrusted with a survey of the Belgian mines and in 1797 was made a professor at the central school of the department of Dyle. On the invitation of the French chemists he assisted in editing the Annales de chimie and in 1801 founded the Journal de chimie et de physique. By his own contributions to these and to the periodicals of Gren, Crelle, Brugnatelli, Nicholson and others he spread abroad a knowledge of the work of such as Volta, Vauquelin, Fourcroy and Chenevix. He was the first to introduce vaccination into Belgium, and all his life he experimented on the improvement of fruit trees. When the Belgian Academy was revived in 1816 Van Mons was nominated to a seat and the following year he was made professor of chemistry and agriculture in the restored University of Louvain. This post he held until 1836. Of his sons, Louis-Ferdinand Van Mons (1796-1847) was one of the chief art Life officers of Belgium and Charles-Jacques Van Mons (1798-1837) was professor of pathology in the University of Brussels.
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Jean-Baptiste Van Mons (1765—1842). Nature 150, 286 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150286c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150286c0