Antoine Jrme Balard

Antoine Jrme Balard (30 September 1802 30 April 1876) was a French chemist and one of the
discoverers of bromine.

Born
30 September 1802
Montpellier
Died
30 April 1876 (aged 73)
Paris
Nationality
French
Fields
chemistry
Known for
discovery of bromine
Influenced
M.P.E. Berthelot
Notable awards
Royal Medal (1830)
Born at Montpellier, he started as an apothecary, but taking up teaching he acted as chemical
assistant at the faculty of sciences of his native town, and then became professor of chemistry at the
royal college and school of pharmacy and at the faculty of sciences. In 1826 he discovered in
seawater a substance which he recognized as a previously unknown element and
named bromine.
[1]
It had been independently prepared by Carl Jacob Lwig the previous year and
the two are both regarded as having discovered the element.
This achievement brought him the reputation that secured his election as successor to Louis
Jacques Thnard in the chair of chemistry at the faculty of sciences in Paris, and in 1851 he was
appointed professor of chemistry at the College de France, where he had M.P.E. Berthelot first as
pupil, then as assistant and finally as colleague.
[1]
Balard also had Louis Pasteur as a pupil when
Pasteur was only 26 years old. It was in Balard's laboratory that Pasteur discovered the difference
between "right-handed" and "left-handed" crystals while he was working with tartaric acid. Balard
died in Paris in 1876.
While the discovery of bromine and the preparation of many of its compounds was his most
conspicuous piece of work, Balard was an industrious chemist on both the pure and applied
sides.
[2]
In his researches on the bleaching compounds of chlorine he was the first to advance the
view that bleaching-powder is a double compound of calcium chlorideand hypochlorite; and he
devoted much time to the problem of economically obtaining soda and potash from seawater, though
here his efforts were nullified by the discovery of the much richer sources of supply afforded by
the Stassfurt deposits. In organic chemistry he published papers on the decomposition of
ammonium oxalate, with formation of oxamic acid, on amyl alcohol, on the cyanides, and on the
difference in constitution between nitric ether and sulphuric ether.
[1]
He also helped Louis
Pasteur devise the experiment that would prove spontaneous generation to be false.