Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis

Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis (zhôzĕf` lwē gā-lüsäk`), 1778–1850, French chemist and physicist. He was professor in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the Polytechnic School, and at the Jardin des Plantes. Gay-Lussac made two balloon ascensions in 1804, attaining on the second a height of about 7,016 m (23,000 ft), to test the variation of the earth's magnetic field and the composition of the atmosphere at varying altitudes. He made advances in industrial chemistry; in the field of analytical chemistry he improved the methods of analyzing gas mixtures, studied prussic acid and iodine, and isolated cyanogen. With L. J. Thénard he improved Davy's method of isolating alkali metals, showed chlorine to be an element, and isolated boron. In physics he is known especially for his work on gases. In 1802 he discovered independently that a gas at constant pressure expands, for each degree of temperature, by a constant fraction of its volume at 0°C;. This law, first discovered (1787) by J. A. C. Charles, is known as Charles's law or as Gay-Lussac's law (see gas laws). However, Gay-Lussac's name is more commonly associated with another law of gases, the law of combining volumes, which Gay-Lussac was the first to formulate (c.1808). This law states that the volumes of gases that interact to give a gaseous product are in the ratio of small whole numbers to each other and that each bears a similar relation to the volume of the product.