Chemistry: 1912

1) Grignard, Francois Auguste Victor pronounced gree NYAHR, (1871-1935), a French organic chemist, discovered the most widely used method for making carbon compounds. He shared the 1912 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Paul Sabatier. Grignard's work made possible new medicines, perfumes, and detergents. In 1900, following the lead of his professor, Philippe Barbier, Grignard found that magnesium combines with a large number of complex compounds. When he treated these combinations with water, he obtained new substances.

Grignard spent most of his life working out the details of his method, which chemists in all parts of the world adopted. By the time he died, scientists had published about 6,000 papers on his work.

Grignard was born in Cherbourg, France. He taught at the universities of Lyon and Nancy.

2) Sabatier, Paul pronounced sah bah TYAY, (1854-1941), was a French organic chemist who received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1912 for discovering that nickel is a good hydrogenation catalyst. In other words, the presence of nickel activates or speeds up hydrogenation, a process that adds hydrogen to molecules of carbon compounds. Sabatier showed that ethylene gas could be converted to ethane gas by passing the ethylene over powdered nickel. Sabatier shared the prize with Francois Grignard, also of France.

Sabatier's early research centered on the thermochemistry (relations between chemical reactions and heat) of sulfur, metallic sulfates, sulfides, chlorides, chromates, and compounds of copper.

Sabatier later moved on to studying catalysis, the process in which a substance speeds up a chemical reaction without being consumed by the reaction. His researches into metal hydrogenation catalysts formed the basis of many industries, including those of synthetic methanol, oil hydrogenation, and margarine. For example, margarine is produced from vegetable oils by catalytic hydrogenation . Sabatier, though, showed little interest in the commercial application of his research. He also studied catalytic hydration and dehydration. An account of his research can be found in his La Catalyse en Chimie Organique (Catalysis in Organic Chemistry), published in 1913.

Sabatier was born in Carcassonne, France. He studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He taught and researched at Bordeaux, and then at Toulouse, where he remained for the rest of his life.