Sainte-Claire Deville, Henri-Étienne

Sainte-Claire Deville, Henri-Étienne 

Born Mar. 11, 1818, on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; died July 1, 1881, in Boulogne-sur-Seine, now Boulogne-Billancourt. French chemist. Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1861).

In 1849, Sainte-Claire Deville obtained nitrogen pentoxide by the action of chlorine on dry silver nitrate. In 1854 he devised the first industrial method for obtaining Al, which was used until the end of the 19th century. From 1855 to 1859, working with the French chemist H. Debray, he developed methods for purifying crude platinum and extracting accompanying substances from platinum residues. Financial support and material for these experiments were provided by the Russian government. In 1872, at the request of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, Sainte-Claire Deville produced an alloy of Pt with 10 percent Ir that was used to prepare the international standard of the meter and kilogram.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
“O platine i soputstvuiushchikh ei metallakh.” Izvestiia In-la po izucheniiu platiny i drugikh blagorodnykh metallov, 1929, issue 7. (With Debray.)

REFERENCE

Oesper, R. E., and P. Lemay. “Henri Sainte-Claire Deville.” In Chymia: Annual Studies in the History of Chemistry, vol. 3. Philadelphia, 1950.