Everything about Henri Moissan totally explained
Ferdinand Frederick Henri Moissan (
September 28,
1852 –
February 20,
1907) was a
French chemist who won the 1906
Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating
fluorine from its compounds.
Preparation of fluorine
Fluorine's existence had been well known for many years, but all attempts to prepare it had failed – and some experimenters had died in the attempt.
Moissan eventually succeeded (in
1886) in preparation by
electrolyzing a
solution of
potassium hydrogen fluoride (KHF
2) in liquid
hydrogen fluoride (HF). The mixture was needed because hydrogen fluoride is a non-conductor. The device was built with
platinum/
iridium electrodes in a platinum holder and cooled the apparatus to −50
°C. The result was to completely isolate the hydrogen produced from the negative
electrode from the fluorine produced at the positive one. This is essentially still the way fluorine is produced today. For this achievement he was in
1906 awarded the
Nobel Prize.
Further studies
Moissan went on to study fluorine chemistry in great detail, contributed to the development of the
electric arc furnace and attempted to use pressure to synthesize
diamonds from the more common form of
carbon. In 1893, Moissan began studying fragments of a meteorite found in
Meteor Crater near
Diablo Canyon in
Arizona. In these fragments he discovered minute quantities of a new mineral and, after extensive research, Moissan concluded that this mineral was made of silicon carbide. In 1905, this mineral was named
Moissanite, in his honor.
Life
The family Moissan originated from Toulouse and moved to Paris, where Moissan was born
September 28, 1852, the son of a lesser officer of the eastern railway company and a seamstress. In 1864 they moved to
Meaux, where he attended the local school. In 1870 he left the school without the "grade universitaire" necessary to attend the university. He started working at a chemist in Paris where he was able to save a person intoxicated with
arsenic. He decided to study chemistry and started first at the laboratory of
Edmond Frémy and later at that of
Pierre Paul Dehérain. Dehérain argued him into an academic career. The
baccalauréat which was necessary to study at the university Moissan obtained in 1874 after a failed attempt. During his time in Paris he became friend of the chemist
Alexandre Léon Étard and botanist Vasque.
He published his first scientific paper about the
carbon dioxide and
oxygen metabolism in plants with Dehérain in 1874. He left plant physiology and turned towards inorganic chemistry and his research on pyrophoric iron was well received by the two most prominent French inorganic chemists of that time,
Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville and
Debray. Afer Moissan received his Ph.D. in 1880, his friend Landrine offered him a position at an analytic laboratory. His marriage to Léonie Lugan took place in 1882. They had a son in 1885. During the 1880s Moissan was focused on fluorine chemistry and especially the production of fluorine itself. He had no laboratory of his own, but used several laboratories, for example that of
Charles Friedel. There he'd access to a strong battery consisting of 90
Bunsen cells which made it possible to observe a gas produced by the electrolysis of molten
arsenic trichloride; the gas was reabsorbed by the arsenic trichloride. The electrolysis of
hydrogen fluoride yielded
fluorine on
June 26, 1886. The French academy of science sent three representatives,
Marcellin Berthelot,
Henri Debray and
Edmond Frémy, to prove the results. Moissan was unable to reproduce his results, due to the fact that the hydrogen fluoride didn't contain any traces of potassium fluoride, as in the previous experiment. After resolving the problem and demonstrating the production of fluorine several times, he was awarded a prize of 10,000 francs. The following years till 1891 he focused on the research of fluorine chemistry. He discovered numerous fluorine compounds, for example together with
Paul Lebeau SF6 in 1901. His research in the production of
boron and artificial
diamonds and the development of an electrically heated oven which was capable to reach 3500°C using 2200 Ampere at 80 Volt followed until 1900.
His newly developed arc furnace opened the road to obtain
borides and
carbides of numerous elements, which was another research area of Moissan.
Death
He died suddenly in
Paris in February 1907, shortly after his return from receiving the Nobel Prize in
Stockholm. His death was attributed to an acute
appendicitis. It isn't known whether his experiments with fluorine contributed to his early death.
Further Information
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