20 Facts About Henri Moissan

Henri Moissan was born in Paris on 28 September 1852, the son of a minor officer of the Eastern Railway Company, Francis Ferdinand Henri Moissan, and a seamstress, Josephine Ameraldine.

Henri Moissan was unable to receive the grade universitaire necessary to attend university.

Henri Moissan became a trainee in pharmacy in 1871 and in 1872 he began working for a chemist in Paris, where he was able to save a person poisoned with arsenic.

Henri Moissan decided to study chemistry and began first in the laboratory of Edmond Fremy at the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, and later in that of Pierre Paul Deherain at the Ecole Pratique des Haute Etudes.

Henri Moissan passed the baccalaureat, which was necessary to study at university, in 1874 after an earlier failed attempt.

Henri Moissan became qualified as first-class pharmacist at the Ecole Superieure de Pharmacie in 1879, and received his doctoral degree there in 1880.

Henri Moissan soon climbed through the ranks of the School of Pharmacy, and was appointed Assistant Lecturer, Senior Demonstrator, and finally Professor of Toxicology by 1886.

Henri Moissan took the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry in 1899.

Henri Moissan died suddenly in Paris in February 1907, shortly after his return from receiving the Nobel Prize in Stockholm.

Henri Moissan's death was attributed to an acute case of appendicitis there is speculation that repeated exposure to fluorine and carbon monoxide contributed to his death.

Henri Moissan was elected fellow of the Royal Society and The Chemical Society of London, served on the International Atomic Weights Committee and made a commandeur in the Legion d'honneur.

Henri Moissan published his first scientific paper, about carbon dioxide and oxygen metabolism in plants, with Deherain in 1874.

Henri Moissan left plant physiology and then turned towards inorganic chemistry; subsequently his research on pyrophoric iron was well received by the two most prominent French inorganic chemists of that time, Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville and Jules Henri Debray.

Henri Moissan had no laboratory of his own, but borrowed lab space from others, including Charles Friedel.

Henri Moissan eventually succeeded in isolating fluorine in 1886 by the electrolysis of a solution of potassium hydrogen difluoride in liquid hydrogen fluoride.

Henri Moissan discovered numerous fluorine compounds, such as sulfur hexafluoride in 1901.

Henri Moissan contributed to the development of the electric arc furnace, which opened several paths to developing and preparing new compounds, and attempted to use pressure to produce synthetic diamonds from the more common form of carbon.

Henri Moissan used the furnace to synthesize the borides and carbides of numerous elements.

In 1893, Henri Moissan began studying fragments of a meteorite found in Meteor Crater near Diablo Canyon in Arizona.

In 1903 Henri Moissan was elected member of the International Atomic Weights Committee where he served until his death.