Louis Joseph Troost (17 October 1825,

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

– 30 September 1911) was a French

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

Biography

In 1848 he began his studies at the

École Normale Supérieure 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 ...

in Paris, where from 1851 he worked as an assistant chemist. In 1856 he received his doctorate of sciences. After serving as chair of chemistry at the

Lycée Bonaparte Lycée Bonaparte is a French international school in Doha, Qatar. It includes levels ''maternelle'' (preschool) through ''lycée'' (senior high school). The École Française de Doha was established in a rented villa in Slata Al Jadida in the 197 ...

, he became a lecturer at the École Normale Supérieure (from 1868). Beginning in 1874, he was a professor of chemistry to the faculty of sciences in Paris, and in 1884, replaced

Charles Adolphe Wurtz Charles Adolphe Wurtz (; 26 November 181710 May 1884) was an Alsatian French chemist. He is best remembered for his decades-long advocacy for the atomic theory and for ideas about the structures of chemical compounds, against the skeptical opinio ...

as a member of the

Académie des sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the ...

.Nature, Volume 87
edited by Sir Norman Lockyer With

Henri Sainte-Claire Deville Henri is an Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Luxembourgish form of the masculine given name Henry. People with this given name ; French noblemen :'' See the ' List of rulers named Henry' for Kings of France named Henri.'' * Henri I de Mon ...

, he worked on determining vapor densities at high temperatures and conducted studies on the

porosity Porosity or void fraction is a measure of the void (i.e. "empty") spaces in a material, and is a fraction of the volume of voids over the total volume, between 0 and 1, or as a percentage between 0% and 100%. Strictly speaking, some tests measure ...

of metals at high temperatures. Also with Deville, he helped advance the concept of "

chemical dissociation Dissociation in chemistry is a general process in which molecules (or ionic compounds such as salts, or complexes) separate or split into other things such as atoms, ions, or radicals, usually in a reversible manner. For instance, when an acid ...

". In addition, he performed significant studies of

lithium salts Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid ele ...

, and with

Paul Hautefeuille Paul Gabriel Hautefeuille (2 December 1836 in Étampes – 8 December 1902 in Paris) was a French mineralogist and chemist. Biography From 1855 he studied at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris. Later on, by way of a recom ...

, he conducted research on the

solubility In chemistry, solubility is the ability of a substance, the solute, to form a solution with another substance, the solvent. Insolubility is the opposite property, the inability of the solute to form such a solution. The extent of the solubil ...

of gases in metals.

Selected works

Troost was the author of ''Traité élémentaire de chimie'' (1847; 24th edition, 1948) that became a standard textbook for successive generations of students. His other noted works are: * ''Recherches sur le lithium et ses composés'', 1857. * ''Precis de chimie'', third edition, 1870.WorldCat Identities
Most widely held works by Louis Joseph Troost

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Troost, Louis Joseph 1825 births 1911 deaths Members of the French Academy of Sciences Academic staff of the University of Paris 19th-century French chemists Scientists from Paris