Michel Eugène Chevreul (; 31 August 1786 – 9 April 1889) was a French chemist whose work contributed to significant developments in science, medicine, and art. Chevreul's early work with animal fats revolutionized soap and candle manufacturing and led to his isolation of the
heptadecanoic (margaric), stearic, and
oleic fatty acid
In chemistry, in particular in biochemistry, a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with an aliphatic chain, which is either saturated and unsaturated compounds#Organic chemistry, saturated or unsaturated. Most naturally occurring fatty acids have an ...
s. In the process, Chevreul became the first scientist to define the concept of a
chemical compound
A chemical compound is a chemical substance composed of many identical molecules (or molecular entities) containing atoms from more than one chemical element held together by chemical bonds. A molecule consisting of atoms of only one element ...
and the first to formally characterize the nature of
organic compound
Some chemical authorities define an organic compound as a chemical compound that contains a carbon–hydrogen or carbon–carbon bond; others consider an organic compound to be any chemical compound that contains carbon. For example, carbon-co ...
s; he is consequently considered a founder of modern
organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...
.
In the medical field, Chevreul was first to demonstrate that
diabetics excrete
glucose
Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecular formula , which is often abbreviated as Glc. It is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, a subcategory of carbohydrates. It is mainly made by plants and most algae d ...
in the urine and to isolate
creatine
Creatine ( or ) is an organic compound with the nominal formula . It exists in various tautomers in solutions (among which are neutral form and various zwitterionic forms). Creatine is found in vertebrates, where it facilitates recycling of ...
. Chevreul's study of textile dyes while director of the
Gobelins Manufactory in Paris led to
color theories that "provided the scientific basis for Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painting."
Chevreul is one of the
72 French scientists, mathematicians, and engineers whose names are inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. He
lived to be 102 and was a pioneer in the field of
gerontology
Gerontology ( ) is the study of the social, culture, cultural, psychology, psychological, cognitive, and biology, biological aspects of aging. The word was coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903, from the Ancient Greek, Greek ('), meaning "o ...
.
Biography
Chevreul was born in the town of
Angers
Angers (, , ;) is a city in western France, about southwest of Paris. It is the Prefectures of France, prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Duchy of Anjou, Anjou until the French Revolution. The i ...
, France, where his father was a physician. Chevreul's birth certificate, kept in the registry book of Angers, bears the signature of his father, grandfather, and a great-uncle, all of whom were surgeons.
At around the age of seventeen, Chevreul went to Paris and entered
L. N. Vauquelin's chemical laboratory, afterwards becoming his assistant at the
Muséum national d'histoire naturelle
The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the Ja ...
(National Museum of Natural History) in the ''
Jardin des Plantes''.
In 1813, Chevreul was appointed professor of chemistry at the
Lycée Charlemagne, and subsequently undertook the directorship of the
Gobelins tapestry works, where he carried out his research on colour contrasts. (In 1839, he published the results of his research under the title ''De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs;'' It was translated into English and published in 1854 under the title ''The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors.'' A new translation titled ''On the Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Colors'', with commentary, additional chapters, and colour graphics by
Dan Margulis, appeared in 2020.) In 1826, Chevreul became a member of the
Academy of Sciences, and in the same year was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
of London, whose
Copley Medal
The Copley Medal is the most prestigious award of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, conferred "for sustained, outstanding achievements in any field of science". The award alternates between the physical sciences or mathematics and the bio ...
he was awarded in 1857. In 1829, he was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...
and a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
in 1868.
Chevreul succeeded his master, Vauquelin, as professor of
organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...
at the National Museum of Natural History in 1830, and thirty-three years later assumed its directorship also; this he relinquished in 1879, though he still retained his professorship. A bronze medal was minted for the occasion of Chevreul's
100th birthday in 1886, and it was celebrated as a national event. Chevreul received letters of commendation from many heads of state and monarchs, including
Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...
. He had a series of recorded meetings with
Nadar
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (; 5 April 1820 – 20 March 1910), known by the pseudonym Nadar () or Félix Nadar'','' was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloon (aircraft), balloonist, and proponent of History of avi ...
, whose son Paul Nadar took photographs, resulting in the first photo-interview ever to appear in a magazine.
Chevreul began to study the effects of aging on the human body shortly before his death at the age of 102, which occurred in Paris on 9 April 1889. He was honoured with a public funeral. In 1901, a statue was erected to his memory in the museum with which he was connected for so many years.
Chevreul's work

Chevreul's scientific work covered a wide range, but he is best known for the classical researches he carried out on animal fats, published in 1823 (''Recherches sur les corps gras d'origine animale''). These enabled him to elucidate the true nature of soap; he was also able to discover the composition of
stearin
Stearin , or tristearin, or glyceryl tristearate is an odourless, white powder. It is a triglyceride derived from three units of stearic acid. Most triglycerides are derived from at least two and more commonly three different fatty acids. Like ...
, a white substance found in the solid parts of most animal and vegetable fats, and
olein, the liquid part of any fat, and to isolate stearic and
oleic acid
Oleic acid is a fatty acid that occurs naturally in various animal and vegetable fats and oils. It is an odorless, colorless oil, although commercial samples may be yellowish due to the presence of impurities. In chemical terms, oleic acid is cl ...
s, the names of which he invented. This work led to important improvements in the processes of candle-manufacture.
Chevreul was a determined enemy of
charlatanism in every form, and a complete
sceptic as to the "scientific" psychical research or
spiritualism which had begun in his time. His research on the "magic pendulum",
Dowsing
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, Petroleum, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active do ...
rods and
table-turning is revolutionary. In an open letter to
André-Marie Ampère in 1833, and his 1854 paper "De la baguette", Chevreul explains how human muscular reactions, totally involuntary and subconscious, are responsible for seemingly magical movements. In the end, Chevreul discovered that once a person holding divining rods/magic pendulum became aware of the brain's reaction, the movements stopped and could not be willingly reproduced. His was one of the earliest explanations of the
ideomotor effect.
In 1824, Chevreul was named director of the dye works at the
Gobelins Manufactory in Paris, in response to complaints about technical inadequacies. He found that some dyes were indeed deficient, but that the oft-criticized black dye was first-rate. Yet fabrics dyed with this black were perceived as weak and reddish when surrounded by deep blues and/or purples. Chevreul called this effect
simultaneous contrast, defining it as the tendency for a color to appear to shift toward the complementary of its neighbor, both in terms of hue and darkness.
He explored the ramifications of the concept at book-length in 1839, intending to form a comprehensive theory for all the visual arts. It offered design principles for tapestries, carpets, furniture, mosaics, churches, museums, apartments, formal gardens, theaters, maps, typography, framing, stained glass, women's clothing, and even military uniforms. It is most noted, however, for its influence on
Impressionist and
Neo-Impressionist painting, particularly the
Pointillist style developed by
Georges Seurat and
Paul Signac, which featured tiny juxtapositions of complementary colors.
Camille Pissarro reported that he had interviewed Seurat, who had described the style as a search for "the modern synthesis with scientifically based means which will be founded on the theory of colors discovered by M. Chevreul and in accordance with the experiments of
Maxwell
Maxwell may refer to:
People
* Maxwell (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
** James Clerk Maxwell, mathematician and physicist
* Justice Maxwell (disambiguation)
* Maxwell baronets, in the Baronetage of N ...
and the measurements of
N. O. Rood."
Chevreul stressed the importance of accurate portrayal of lighting in promoting realism, but added, "It is almost always so that accurate, yet exaggerated coloring is found more pleasing than absolute fidelity to the scene."
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...
took the advice to heart, making lavish use of complementaries to intensify one another. Van Gogh wrote, "this reciprocal heightening is what's called the law of simultaneous contrast…If the complementary colors are taken at equal value, that is to say, at the same degree of brightness and light, their juxtaposition will raise both the one and the other to an intensity so violent that human eyes will scarcely be able to bear to look at it."
Chevreul was also influential in twentieth-century painting, especially that of
Robert Delaunay
Robert Delaunay (; 12 April 1885 – 25 October 1941) was a French artist of the School of Paris movement; who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism (art), Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and g ...
, who was introduced to Chevreul's theories by his friend
Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1 ...
. Delaunay's style of mixing relatively large blocks of near-complementaries is today usually known as
Orphism. Delaunay himself, however, preferred the name "Simultanism," a clear nod to Chevreul.
Chevreul is also linked to what is sometimes called ''Chevreul's illusion'', the bright edges that seem to exist between adjacent strips of identical colors having different intensities. See Chevreul's ''The Laws of Contrast of Colour'' for more information.
[See page 4 and plate 1 of - English translation by John Spanton.]
Bibliography
For a list of Chevreul's scientific writings up to 1886 see by G. Malloizel.
*
*
*
*
* - translated into English by Charles Martel as ''The principles of harmony and contrast of colours'' (1854)
* (English translation)
*
*
*
*
Notes
References
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
* Obituary in:
Chevreul on cyberlipid.orgPaper on Chevreul's life-long work on colour contrast by Prof Georges Roque, Paris* Chevreul's (1861
''Exposé d’un moyen de définir et de nommer les couleurs. Atlas''- digital facsimile from the
Linda Hall Library
* Chevreul's (1888
''Des couleurs et de lueurs applications aux arts industriels a l'aide des cercles chromatiques''- digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chevreul, Michel Eugene
1786 births
1889 deaths
19th-century French chemists
Color scientists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Foreign members of the Royal Society
French Roman Catholics
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
French men centenarians
National Museum of Natural History (France) people
People from Angers
People of the Industrial Revolution
Recipients of the Copley Medal