Le Chatelier, Henri Louis

Le Châtelier, Henri Louis 

Born Oct. 8,1850, in Paris; died Sept. 17, 1936, in Miribel-les-Echelles. French physical chemist and specialist in physical metallurgy. Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1907).

Le Châtelier was a professor at the Paris Ecole des Mines (1877–1919), Collège de France (1898–1907), and the University of Paris (1907–25). In 1881–82 he and the French chemist F. E. Mallard proposed a unique method of determining the specific heats of gases at high temperatures. In 1884 he formulated a general law for the disturbance of chemical equilibrium by external factors (Le Châtelier’s principle). Between 1886 and 1889 he devised a thermoelectric pyrometer for measuring high temperatures. He confirmed the experimental analogy between solutions and melts, as suggested by the Russian scientist D. K. Chernov in 1868. In 1897, Le Châtelier constructed a metallographic microscope. He was an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1927).

REFERENCES

Baikov, A. A. “Le Shatel’e.” In his book Sobr. trudov, vol. 1. Moscow, 1952. Pages 227–33.
Pascal, P. “Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Henri Le Châtelier (1850-1936).” Bulletin de la Société chimique de France, 1937, vol. 4, no. 10, p. 1557.
“A la mémoire de Henri Le Châtelier, 1850–1936.” Revue de métallurgie, 1937, no. 1. (Contains a bibliography of works by Le Châtelier.)

S. A. POGODIN