Raoul-Pierre Pictet (4 April 1846 – 27 July 1929) was a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

. Pictet is co-credited with French scientist

Louis-Paul Cailletet Louis-Paul Cailletet (21 September 1832 – 5 January 1913) was a French physicist and inventor. Life and work Cailletet was born in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Côte-d'Or. Educated in Paris, Cailletet returned to Châtillon to manage his fathe ...

as the first to produce liquid

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...

in 1877.

Biography

Pictet was born in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...

. He served as

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

in the university of that city. He devoted himself largely to problems involving the production of low temperatures and the liquefaction and solidification of gases.For biographical details, see On December 22, 1877, the

Academy of Sciences An academy of sciences is a type of learned society or academy (as special scientific institution) dedicated to sciences that may or may not be state funded. Some state funded academies are tuned into national or royal (in case of the Unite ...

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 ...

received a telegram from Pictet in Geneva reading as follows: ''Oxygen liquefied to-day under 320 atmospheres and 140 degrees of cold by combined use of sulfurous and carbonic acid.'' This announcement was almost simultaneous with that of Cailletet who had liquefied oxygen by a completely different process. Pictet died in Paris in 1929.

Works

* * * ''Nouvelles machines frigorifiques basées sur l'emploi de phénomènes physicochimiques'' (1895) * ''Étude critique du matérialisme et du spiritualisme par la physique expérimentale'' (1896) * ''L'acétylène'' (1896) * ''Le carbide'' (1896) * ''Zur mechanischen Theorie der Explosivstoffe'' (1902) * ''Die Theorie der Apparate zur Herstellung flüssiger Luft mit Entspannung'' (1903) *

References

1846 births 1929 deaths Scientists from Geneva Swiss physicists Swiss non-fiction writers Swiss male writers Male non-fiction writers {{physicist-stub

Biography

Works

See also

References