1. Marcellin Berthelot synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jons Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis.
15 Facts About Marcellin Berthelot
1. 2.
Marcellin Berthelot was convinced that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized foods would replace farms and pastures.
3.
Marcellin Berthelot gave all his discoveries not only to the French government but to humanity.
4.
Marcellin Berthelot was born in Rue du Mouton, Paris, France, on 25 October 1827, the son of a doctor.
5.
Marcellin Berthelot decided with his friend, the great historian Ernest Renan, not to attend a where the vast majority of intellectuals were being educated.
6.
Marcellin Berthelot was an atheist but was very influenced by his wife, who was a Calvinist.
7.
Marcellin Berthelot engaged in a long argument with Louis Pasteur on the subject of vitalism, in which Pasteur took the vitalist position on the basis of his work on alcoholic fermentation.
8.
Marcellin Berthelot was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1880.
9.
Marcellin Berthelot was elected an International Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1833.
10.
Marcellin Berthelot stated that chemical phenomena are not governed by any peculiar laws special to themselves, but are explicable in terms of the general laws of mechanics that are in operation throughout the universe; and this view he developed, with the aid of thousands of experiments, in his Mecanique chimique and his Thermochimie.
11.
Marcellin Berthelot performed experiments to determine gas pressures during hydrogen explosions using a special chamber fitted with a piston, and was able to distinguish burning of mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen from true explosions.
12.
Marcellin Berthelot was the author of Science et philosophie, which contains a well-known letter to Renan on "La Science ideale et la science positive," of La Revolution chimique, Lavoisier, of Science et morale, and of numerous articles in La Grande Encyclopedie, which he helped to establish.
13.
Marcellin Berthelot died suddenly on 18 March 1907, immediately after the death of his wife Sophie Niaudet, in Paris.
14.
Marcellin Berthelot was buried with his wife in the Pantheon.
15.
Marcellin Berthelot had six children: Marcel Andre, Marie-Helene, Camille, Daniel, Philippe, and Rene.