Who was Joseph Proust?

Joseph-Louis Proust, also known as Luis Proust, (born Sept. 26, 1754, Angers, France — died July 5, 1826, Angers), a French pharmacist who proved that the limited amount of any pure chemical components provided remains constant. , regardless of the background. This is known as the Proust law, or law of precise measurements (1793), and is a basic principle of analytical chemistry. Proust also conducted important research into metallurgy, explosives, and chemical food allergies.

 

 

Joseph-Louis Proust, Pierre-Jean David medal

Joseph-Louis Proust

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Born: September 26, 1754 Angers France

Died: July 5, 1826 (aged 71) Angers France

Research Topics: the law of specific measurements of chemical analysis

Education and health

The son of an apothecary, Proust prepared for the same profession, first with his father at Angers and then in Paris, where he studied chemistry with Hilaire-Martin Rouelle. In 1776 Proust was appointed pharmacist at Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. This position was short-lived, however, because in 1778 Proust left the pharmacy to take a professorship in chemistry at the newly established Seminario Patriótico Vascongado in Vergara, Spain. The school was the creation of the Real Sociedad Económica Vascongada de Amigos del País, the first and most important of the "enlightened" provincial communities in Spain.

 

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In 1780 Proust returned to Paris, where he taught chemistry at Musée, an independent educational institution founded by scientific impresario Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier. Part of this association involved Proust's aerostatic experiment, which culminated in the ascension of the balloon with Pilâtre on June 23, 1784, in Versailles, before the royal court.

 

In 1786 Proust returned to Spain to teach chemistry, first in Madrid and then in 1788 at the Royal Artillery School in Segovia. The school was founded in 1764 as part of Charles III's government program to inform Spain in northern Europe about military training. The Proust chair (and the associated school of chemistry and metal) was proposed in 1784 to introduce artillery cadets in the latest appropriate science training. Because of Spain's scientific backlog, professional teachers had to be sought. Proust was recommended by French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier.

 

 

Proust did not take up his seat until 1792, due to a combination of bureaucratic inefficiencies and his direct laboratory requirements for laboratory equipment. When it finally got ready, his laboratory was undoubtedly one of the best in Europe, and Proust probably made the most of his active and analytical chemistry there. Difficulties with the military authorities, however, led to Proust's transfer in 1799 to a chemistry chair in Madrid.

 

In 1798 Proust married Anne Rose Chatelain Daubigne, a French citizen of Segovia. They returned to France in 1806 under mysterious conditions and settled in Craon, near Angers. After the death of his wife in 1817, Proust moved to Angers, where in 1820 he took over the pharmacy of his sick brother Joachim. Although Proust had returned to France under reduced circumstances, his scientific status was recognized. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences to succeed Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau in 1816; was made chevalier for the Legion of Honor in 1819; and was granted a pension by Louis XVIII in 1820.

 

The law of precise measurements

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Proust is well-known as a critical chemist, especially for his call for precise measurement law. The essence of Proust's law is that chemical compounds only combine to form a small number of compounds, each of which is characterized by components that combine in proportional weight. Proust's formulation and experimental demonstration of this law were concerned only with inorganic binary compounds, such as metallic oxides, sulfides, and sulfates. He believed that most metals form two different oxides in fixed quantities — which he called small and large — and that these could produce different series of compounds. With sulfides, Proust asserted that there is only one metal, besides iron.

 

Although legal statements that attracted the attention of European pharmacists began appearing in French newspapers as early as 1797, Proust had enacted the law in 1793 and published it in 1795 in Spanish newspapers. Proust's law of precision was based on the precursors of 18th-century chemistry and similarity to 18th-century French mineralogy. At the same time as the composition of Proust was the theory of stable minerals in the French mineralogy, which was described in the form of a concentrated crystal structure and a consistent chemical composition.

 

Proust's law of precision measurements was attacked in 1803 by the famous French chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet, who had developed his own theory of chemical computation in 1801 to suggest that chemical compounds were not limited to direct measurements of water saturation. The controversy took place in French science journals and had a paper or two each year from each character. The essence of the argument was the definition of a combination of chemicals. As was the custom, Berth

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