Jean-Baptiste Boussingault

An adventurous life

Wire of a former soldier who held tobacconist's and a girl shop of the burgomaster of Wetzlar, incompetent to support the Napoleonean college, it is formed alone while following the public courses of the Collège de France and the national Muséum of natural history. Learning creation from the School of the minors of Saint-Etienne (current 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the mines of Saint-Etienne), it joined the bag establishment with the back in December 1818, becomes acquainted with Benoît Fourneyron and discovers the quality of the chemical laboratory. The director Louis-Antoine Beaunier, filled with enthusiasm by his capacities, entrusts soon experiments to him and it shows that steel contains silicon. Classified except contest, it leaves with its patent in July 1820. Simon Bolivar wishing to found in Colombia an establishment to train engineers, Boussingault, recommended by Alexander von Humboldt, embarks in September 1821 for the South America. It meets Bolivar with Bogota in May 1822 and is attached to its staff. It is devoted to many scientific observations which contribute to its fame and it starts to be interested in the agricultural questions. It enters to the service of an English company in 1827 to direct the exploitation of a gold mine. Of return in France, he is elected with the Academy of Science in 1839, then named chemistry teacher and senior of the Faculty of Science of Lyon (1843) before becoming in 1841 professor with the pulpit of rural economy to the Conservatoire national of arts and trades, created especially for him.

The founder of modern agricultural chemistry

Joint owner of the field of Bechelbronne, by his marriage with Alsatian, which enables him to be devoted to its agronomic experiments, it will be the founder of modern agricultural chemistry. He became famous for his discoveries on the absorption of the Azote on the plants. He makes research on the exact composition of the atmospheric air, in collaboration with Dumas, on the composition in plants of the food of the herbivores, on the detection of the Arsenic. Its book, the rural Économie creates sensation in 1843 and devotes its reputation like first agricultural chemist. It gathers its work on agricultural chemistry under the title Agronomie, agricultural chemistry and physiology , whose eight volumes are published between 1860 and 1891, very quickly translated into English and German.

It is made elect appointed the Low-Rhine (1848-1849) and resigns to enter to the Council of State where it sits until 1851. Its political career is completed with the advent of the Second Empire. “There are well few scientists with whom it political succeeded, and science there always lost. ” Very attached to Alsace, which he sees with sadness attached to the German Empire in 1871, he preserves bonds with the area inhabitant of Saint-Etienne. One of his/her daughters marries the manufacturer mechanic Jean-Claude Crozet, nephew of Benoit Fourneyron, and the other Jules Holtzer, director of the Forging mills and Aciéries of Unieux. This last arranges for his/her father-in-law a laboratory in the factory for the development of the chrome steels. Its last years are obscured by the untimely death of his/her Holtzer son-in-law then by that of his wife.

It was successively high with the various rows of the legion of honor of knight with large officer in 1876. In 1895, Aime-Jules Dalou carried out a group out of bronze dedicated to Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, where two figures symbolize Science with the service of Agriculture, installed public garden of the Morin General in Paris. A crater of the the Moon bears the name of Boussingault, in homage to this impassioned volcanos.

External bond

Homage of the École des Mines of Saint-Etienne to Jean-Baptiste Boussingault

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