Hilaire Marin Rouelle (15 February 1718 – 7 April 1779) was an 18th-century French chemist. Commonly cited as the 1773 discoverer of

urea Urea, also known as carbamide, is an organic compound with chemical formula . This amide has two amino groups (–) joined by a carbonyl functional group (–C(=O)–). It is thus the simplest amide of carbamic acid. Urea serves an important ...

, he was not the first to do so. Dutch scientist

Herman Boerhaave Herman Boerhaave (, 31 December 1668 – 23 September 1738Underwood, E. Ashworth. "Boerhaave After Three Hundred Years." ''The British Medical Journal'' 4, no. 5634 (1968): 820–25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20395297.) was a Dutch botanist, ...

had discovered this

chemical A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., w ...

as early as 1727. Rouelle is known as "le cadet" (the younger) to distinguish him from his older brother, Guillaume-François Rouelle, who was also a chemist.

References

1718 births 1779 deaths People from Mathieu, Calvados 18th-century French chemists Members of the Royal Spanish Academy {{france-chemist-stub