1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mond, Ludwig

MOND, LUDWIG (1839–1909), British chemist, was born at Cassel in Germany on the 7th of March 1839. After studying at Marburg under Hermann Kolbe and at Heidelberg under Robert Bunsen, he came to England in 1862 and obtained a position in a chemical works at Widnes, where he elaborated the practical application of a method he had devised for recovering the sulphur lost as calcium sulphide in the black ash waste of the Leblanc alkali process. He became a naturalized British subject in 1867. In 1873 he entered into partnership with Sir John Tomlinson Brunner (b. 1842–), whom he had met when he was at Widnes, and thus founded the great chemical manufacturing firm of Brunner, Mond & Co. They began to make alkali by the ammonia-soda process, under licence from the Belgian chemist, Ernest Solvay, but at first the venture threatened to prove a failure. Gradually, however, the technical difficulties were overcome and success assured, largely as a result of improved methods worked out by Mond for the recovery of the ammonia. About 1879 he began experiments in the economical utilization of fuel, and his efforts led him to the system of making producer-gas, known by his name (see Gas: II. For Fuel and Power). Later, while attempting to utilize the gas for the production of electricity by means of a Grove gas battery, he noticed that the carbon monoxide contained in it combined with nickel. The resulting compound, nickel carbonyl, which was described to the Chemical Society in 1890, is both formed and decomposed within a very moderate range of temperature, and on this fact he based a successful process for the extraction of nickel from its ores. A liberal contributor to the purposes of scientific research, Mond founded in 1896 the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory in connexion with the Royal Institution. On his death, which occurred in London on the 11th of December 1909, he bequeathed a large part of his collection of pictures to the nation.