Joseph Gay-Lussac



Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (December 6, 1778 – May 9, 1850) was a notable chemist who assisted in the discovery and founding of one of chemistry's major scientific laws involving gases. His research showed the consistency of gaseous properties at different altitudes, flying a hot air balloon to dangerous heights for the cause of science. His studies also helped the formation of Charles' Law, also known as Gay-Lussac's Law. By working tirelessly for many years, fighting off rivals who tried to get to the information first, he successfully made a reputation for himself, and it has permanently implanted him within Chemistry curriculum, so that our generation and future generations can learn from his experiments.

Personal Background and Education
Joseph Gay-Lussac was a French Chemist who was born in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, France on December 6, 1778. He was the eldest of two sons and three daughters born to Antoine Gay and Léonarde Bouriquet. His father was a judge, and assumed the second name of Lussac from a small property that he possessed in the neighborhood.

Joseph received most of his education at home from the abbé Bourdieux, along with other similar masters of education. In 1794 at only sixteen years of age, Gay-Lussac was sent away to Paris in order to prepare for the École Polytechnique, an institute in France for higher learning, along with the fact that his father was arrested for being involved with the bourgeois establishment. He was admitted in 1797 after passing his examination. In 1800, at the age of twenty-two, Gay-Lussac was transferred to the École des Ponts et Chaussées, France's civil engineering institute of education. He was then assigned soon afterward to C. L. Berthollet, a professor at the institute.

In 1802, Gay-Lussac was appointed demonstrator to Antoine François Fourcroy, and in 1807, Berthollet made Gay-Lussac one of the first members of the Socité d'Arcueil, an important society of science that originated from the scientific desires and attentions of Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1809, Joseph Gay-Lussac became a professor of chemistry at the Sorbonne at the age of thirty-one, and he married Geneviève-Marie-Joseph Rojot. Together, the two of them had five children: two daughters named Virginie and Joséphine Eléonore, and three sons named Jules, Louis, and Gabriel. Gay-Lussac remained a professor of chemistry until 1832, and later died on May 9, 1850 at the age of seventy-two. His wife died twenty-six years later in 1876.

Studies and Research
While acting as his assistant, Berthollet saw a great amount of potential in young Joseph, and supported his research. Gay-Lussac spent the majority of his time experimenting with the properties of gases, such as capillarity, hygrometry, and vapor tension. He made the observation that gases heated from 0 to 100 degrees Celsius are proportionally dilated. John Dalton had already done experiments of the same nature, a fact that Gay-Lussac was likely ignorant of, but Dalton's experiments were rather far from accurate. Gay-Lussac did not feel that his experimentations would be noted by the public eye, so he did not publish his findings.

However, in 1804, Gay-Lussac was given the opportunity to test out some of his theories about gaseous properties in a balloon over Egypt thanks to Berthollet. Their first ascent was on August 24, 1804, and Gay-Lussac, along with another friend, J.B. Biot, reached an altitude of 4,000 meters, which is close to 13,000 feet. Unfortunately, Gay-Lussac felt that this altitude was not sufficient for his experimentation, and ascended alone on September 16, 1804, to a level of 7,016 meters, which is about the equivalent of 23,000 feet! While Gay-Lussac remained in the below-freezing temperature for several hours, he had the opportunity to observe the humidity, magnetism, and temperature of the air he was in.

Later, in March of 1805, Gay-Lussac and another friend named Alexander von Humboldt, started from Paris on an expedition in pursuit of scientific knowledge through Switzerland, Italy, and Germany after reading a paper in October of the following year about eudiometric analysis, which is essentially the analyzing of gas. In that paper, the two of them learned about the combining volumes of two different molecules, Oxygen and Hydrogen, the volume of the oxygen molecule was proportional to two volumes of the hydrogen molecule, and eventually determined the exact proportions of each molecule in a sample of water.

In 1810, Gay-Lussac wrote and published a paper on his experiments with fermentation. After his success with these experiments, he continued to perform them, and published another paper on the subject in 1815. Around this same time, Gay-Lussac and his assistant, Louis-Jacques Thénard, were attempting to improve the methods of organic analysis, and they were able to determine the combustion of a number of different gases, using oxidizing agents such as potassium chlorate and copper oxide.

Gay-Lussac also did extensive research on prussic acid. In 1811, he published a document that described the physical properties of the acid, and later on in 1815 revealed more information about its chemical composition.

Rivalry with Sir Humphry Davy
Gay-Lussac had a slight rivalry between himself and the creation scientist Sir Humphry Davy. Davy was chemically preparing Potassium and Sodium through an electrical current, and this made Gay-Lussac and Thénard envious of his success. They too decided to perform the same task, but they had no battery at their disposal as Davy had, so they had to form another way to chemically prepare the two elements. In 1808, they used a red-hot iron fused to potash, the water-soluble form of a manufactured salt containing potassium, to perform this task, a method that Davy admitted had its advantageous qualities. Gay-Lussac and Thénard were successful in preparing Potassium, and continued to make a full analysis of its chemical properties, and began to use it for their own experiments. In 1809, Davy performed the same task, using it to reduce Boron in Boracic acid.

In another instance, there was a dispute between Davy and Gay-Lussac about Chlorine, know in that era as "oxymuriatic acid." Gay-Lussac and Thénard believed that the acid was possibly an element, but soon declared it to be a compound in 1809 after extensive experimentation. However, Davy was able to prove the fact that there was no oxygen in "oxymuriatic acid" as the two of them claimed, and was able to sway the scientific community to the opinion that it was, indeed, an element.

Gay-Lussac and Davy continued to confront each other throughout their lives. In another similar circumstance, Davy was able to obtain some samples of Iodine in Paris while traveling to Italy in 1813. Iodine had only been discovered two years earlier by Bernard Courtois, and had not been studied extensively. Davy used his portable laboratory to make an examination of the substance, and soon declared it to be an element. This supposedly irritated Gay-Lussac, since there were foreign scientists making discoveries before himself, and he decided to study the new substance very persistently. He saw that the substance resembled Chlorine, and eventually admitted that he agreed with Davy's original findings.

Discoveries
Gay-Lussac determined from his observations in the balloon that the magnetism on the earth remained constant, even at heights far above the ground. His original studies involving the changes in gaseous volumes with temperature also proved to be correct. He found that an increase in a gases temperature would cause an increase in that gas' volume. His results were published in 1802, and showed his work to be more precise than Dalton's earlier and more simplistic experiments. The credit for this discovery does not tend to be given to either Dalton or Gay-Lussac, but to Jacques Charles, who performed experiments with gases in 1787. The thermal expansion of gases is either called Gay-Lussac's law or Charles' law.

Impact on Chemistry
Gay-Lussac developed several different theories and helped form chemical laws that are still used in chemistry curriculum today. He helped to develop the most precise method for analyzing just how much alcohol content there is in certain liquors. He also patented a method for manufacturing sulfuric acid.

Gay-Lussac's final published paper was on a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids that would dissolve either gold or platinum. He managed to get it published a year before his death in 1850. Gay-Lussac is still remembered as a very prominent member of the world of chemistry. Marcellin Bertholet, a prominent chemist a quarter of a century after Gay-Lussac's death, once said, "We all teach…the chemistry of Lavoisier and Gay-Lussac." This shows that his research had a profound impact on the development of chemical theorems and the advancement of humanity's knowledge of the world of chemistry.

Additional Information

 * Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac Answer.com. 2011.
 * Gay-Lussac -- Scientist Woodrow Wilson Leadership Program in Chemistry. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. 2011.
 * Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac Chemical Heritage Foundation. 2010.
 * Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy & Sustainable Living. Encyclopedia of History. 2011.