Bertrand Pelletier (31 July 1761 – 21 July 1797) was an 18th-century French pharmacist and chemist.
Biography
Bertrand Pelletier was the son of the pharmacist Bertrand Pelletier, and his wife Marie Sabatier. After training with his father, which lasted until 1778, he continued his apprenticeship with Bernard Coubet in Paris. There, Pelletier became friend with Jean Darcet (1725–1801) and
Pierre Bayen
Pierre Bayen (7 February 1725–14 February 1798) was a French chemist. He analyzed water drunk by the Kingdom of France, and he wrongly suggested that using pewter glasses rendered the water toxic. He became a member of the French Academy of ...
(1725–1798). In 1782, he became Darcet's assistant and demonstrator at the
. The same year, his first publication on the preparation and properties of
arsenic acid
Arsenic acid or trihydrogen arsenate is the chemical compound with the formula . More descriptively written as , this colorless acid is the arsenic analogue of phosphoric acid. Arsenate and phosphate salts behave very similarly. Arsenic acid as ...
Hilaire Rouelle
Hilaire Marin Rouelle (15 February 1718 – 7 April 1779) was an 18th-century French chemist. Commonly cited as the 1773 discoverer of urea, he was not the first to do so. Dutch scientist Herman Boerhaave had discovered this chemical
A chem ...
evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization that occurs on the surface of a liquid as it changes into the gas phase. High concentration of the evaporating substance in the surrounding gas significantly slows down evaporation, such as when humidi ...
and
inoculation
Inoculation is the act of implanting a pathogen or other microorganism. It may refer to methods of artificially inducing immunity against various infectious diseases, or it may be used to describe the spreading of disease, as in "self-inoculati ...
. A year later, he confirmed
Carl Wilhelm Scheele
Carl Wilhelm Scheele (, ; 9 December 1742 – 21 May 1786) was a Swedish German pharmaceutical chemist.
Scheele discovered oxygen (although Joseph Priestley published his findings first), and identified molybdenum, tungsten, barium, hydrog ...
's discovery that
chlorine
Chlorine is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate betwee ...
can be produced from
hydrochloric acid
Hydrochloric acid, also known as muriatic acid, is an aqueous solution of hydrogen chloride. It is a colorless solution with a distinctive pungent smell. It is classified as a strong acid
Acid strength is the tendency of an acid, symbol ...
and
manganese
Manganese is a chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese is a transition metal with a multifaceted array of industrial alloy use ...
. Like
Claude Louis Berthollet
Claude Louis Berthollet (, 9 December 1748 – 6 November 1822) was a Savoyard-French chemist who became vice president of the French Senate in 1804. He is known for his scientific contributions to theory of chemical equilibria via the mecha ...
, Pelletier arrived to the false conclusion that the resulting gas was a combination of hydrochloric acid and oxygen. An adherent to Carl Wilhelm Scheele's
phlogiston
The phlogiston theory is a superseded scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called phlogiston () contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''burni ...
theory, Pelletier followed
Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), CNRS (
phosphorus
Phosphorus is a chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Ear ...
in depth. He succeeded for the first time the presentation of
phosphides
In chemistry, a phosphide is a compound containing the ion or its equivalent. Many different phosphides are known, with widely differing structures. Most commonly encountered on the binary phosphides, i.e. those materials consisting only of phos ...
of many metals.
During the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
, Pelletier was a member of the ''Bureau de Consultation des Arts et Metiers'' and the ''Commission Temporaire des Arts''. In 1790 he undertook two trips to
Reims
Reims ( , , ; also spelled Rheims in English) is the most populous city in the French department of Marne, and the 12th most populous city in France. The city lies northeast of Paris on the Vesle river, a tributary of the Aisne.
Founded by ...
where he passed the exams to be a doctor. In 1792, Pelletier was selected to be a member of the
where he followed the course on mineral chemistry by
Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau
Louis-Bernard Guyton, Baron de Morveau (also Louis-Bernard Guyton-Morveau after the French Revolution; 4 January 1737 – 2 January 1816) was a French chemist, politician, and aeronaut. He is credited with producing the first systematic method o ...
.
Publications
Information taken mostly from Johann Christian Poggendorff: ''Biographisch–literarisches Handwörterbuch zur Geschichte der exacten Wissenschaften''. Zweiter Band M–Z, Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig 1863, (p. 391–392 (online)