1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pelouze, Théophile Jules

PELOUZE, THÉOPHILE JULES (1807–1867), French chemist, was born at Valognes, in Normandy, on the 26th (or 13th) of February 1807. His father, Edmond Pelouze (d. 1847), was an industrial chemist and the author of several technical handbooks. The son, after spending some time in a pharmacy at La Fère, acted as laboratory assistant to Gay-Lussac and J. L. Lassaigne (1800–1859) at Paris from 1827 to 1829. In 1830 he was appointed associate professor of chemistry at Lille, but returning to Paris next year became repétiteur, and subsequently professor, at the École Polytechnique. He also held the chair of chemistry at the Collège de France, and in 1833 became assayer to the mint and in 1848 president of the Commission des Monnaies. After the coup d’état in 1851 he resigned his appointments, but continued to conduct a laboratory-school he had started in 1846. He died in Paris on the 1st of June 1867. Though Pelouze made no discovery of outstanding importance, he was a busy investigator, his work including researches on salicin, on beetroot sugar, on various organic acids—gallic, malic, tartaric, butyric, lactic, &c.—on oenanthic ether (with Liebig), on the nitrosulphates, on gun-cotton, and on the composition and manufacture of glass. He also carried out determinations of the atomic weights of several elements, and with E. Frémy, published Traité de chimie générale (1847–1850), Abrégé de chimie (1848); and Notions générales de chimie (1853).