Jean-François Clouet (11 November 1751 – 4 July 1801) was a French chemist and metallurgist. His notable works include the liquefaction of sulphur dioxide in collaboration with Gaspard Monge and the production of Damascus and cast steel.
Clouet was born in
Singly
Singly () is a commune in the Ardennes department in northern France.
See also
*Communes of the Ardennes department
The following is a list of the 449 communes of the Ardennes department of France.
The communes cooperate in the followi ...
, Ardennes, son of farmer Norbert and Marie-Jeanne Tayaut. Educated at
Charleville Charleville can refer to:
Australia
* Charleville, Queensland, a town in Australia
**Charleville railway station, Queensland
France
* Charleville, Marne, a commune in Marne, France
*Charleville-Mézières, a commune in Ardennes, France
** ...
and at the École du Génie at Mézières he travelled around the country before setting up a pottery workshop where he experimented with enamels. He gave this up in 1783 and became a teacher at the École du Génie where he began to collaborate with
Gaspard Monge
Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse (9 May 1746 – 28 July 1818) was a French mathematician, commonly presented as the inventor of descriptive geometry, (the mathematical basis of) technical drawing, and the father of differential geometry. Durin ...
, conducting experiments on the composition of water, liquefaction of sulphur dioxide under low temperature and high pressure (in 1784) and on balloon flight. He took over Monge's position the next year and began to examine metallurgy, with experiments on
siderite
Siderite is a mineral composed of iron(II) carbonate (FeCO3). It takes its name from the Greek word σίδηρος ''sideros,'' "iron". It is a valuable iron mineral, since it is 48% iron and contains no sulfur or phosphorus. Zinc, magnesium and ...
, and the manufacture of
Damascus steel
Damascus steel was the forged steel of the blades of swords smithed in the Near East from ingots of Wootz steel either imported from Southern India or made in production centres in Sri Lanka, or Khorasan, Iran. These swords are characterize ...
. He also examined the composition of Prussian Blue in 1791. After the French Revolution, in which he participated, in 1793, he was called by
Jean-Nicolas Pache
Jean-Nicolas Pache (, 5 May 1746 – 18 November 1823) was a French politician, a Jacobin who served as Minister of War from October 1792 and Mayor of Paris from February 1793 to May 1794.
Biography
Pache was born in Verdun, but grew up in Par ...
to improve metallurgy and worked at several places including the
École Polytechnique
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
Daigny
Daigny () is a commune in the Ardennes department in northern France.
Population
See also
*Communes of the Ardennes department
The following is a list of the 449 communes of the Ardennes department of France.
The communes cooperate in t ...
. In 1795 he claimed to have produced Damascus steel by the addition of diamonds to molten iron. This method of hardening steel was later replaced by graphite by others. He also found a way to cast steel by melting cast iron with chalk and charcoal. He was honoured at the
Exposition des produits de l'industrie française
The Exposition des produits de l'industrie française (Exhibition of Products of French Industry) was a public event organized in Paris, France, from 1798 to 1849.
The purpose was "to offer a panorama of the productions of the various branches of ...
of September 1798. He also began to make experiments on plant chemicals. Clouet was a friend of
Claude Henri de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (17 October 1760 – 19 May 1825), often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon (), was a French political, economic and socialist theorist and businessman whose thought had a substantial influence on p ...
and became interested in reformism and Rousseanism. In 1799 he decided to move to Guiana where he wished to examined tropical plants. He died from a fever at
Cayenne
Cayenne (; ; gcr, Kayenn) is the capital city of French Guiana, an overseas region and Overseas department, department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the Atlantic Oc ...
.
Some early biographers of Clouet have confounded him with two others Abbé Pierre-Romain Clouet (1748–1810), a librarian at the Ecole des Mines, and Jean-Baptiste-Paul-Antoine Clouet (1739–1816), who worked with
Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794), CNRS (