Joseph louis gay-lussac

joseph louis gay-lussac contribution to science

A French chemist and physicist who discovered the law of combining volumes of gases and co-discovered boron and iodine. He also made hydrogen-balloon ascents, measured alcoholic beverages, and was a professor and a peer of France. French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac proposed two fundamental laws of gases in the early 19th century.

While one is generally attributed to a fellow countryman, the other is well known as Gay-Lussac’s law. His daring ascents in hydrogen-filled balloons were key to his investigations. Learn about the French chemist and physicist who made significant contributions to the study of gases, cyanogen, and iodine. Discover his achievements, collaborations, inventions, and controversies in this comprehensive biography.

Joseph Louis Gay Lussac was a French chemist and physicist who made notable advances in applied chemistry. He was noted for his pioneering investigations into the behavior of gases and for his studies of the properties of cyanogen and iodine.

A French chemist and physicist who discovered the law of thermal expansion of gases and made two balloon ascents. He also collaborated with Humboldt and Laplace and was a member of the Institute and the upper house. Gay-Lussac is well known to modern chemists for two laws, one relating the volume of a gas to its temperature volume increases linearly with temperature , and the second, called the law of combining Gay-Lussac is well known to modern chemists for two laws, one relating the volume of a gas to its temperature volume increases linearly with temperature , and the second, called the law of combining volumes, which states that when two gases combine, their volumes are in the ratios of small whole numbers.

This latter law, announced in , demonstrated, for example, that when one combines hydrogen and oxygen to form water, it takes exactly two volumes of hydrogen for every one volume of oxygen. The law of combining volumes could be used to support John Dalton's atomic theory, published the very same year, for if water consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, then one might well expect that you would need two volumes of hydrogen for every one of oxygen assuming that equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of particles, and Amadeo Avogadro would offer this up as his own law, Avogadro's hypothesis, in For the non-chemist, Gay-Lussac's career as a balloonist might be of more interest.

With fellow chemist Jean-Baptiste Biot, Gay-Lussac made a balloon ascent of some 4 miles in , collecting atmospheric samples all the way, and the next year he made a solo ascent and went even higher, setting an altitude record of some 23, feet that would stand for another 60 years. He also determined that the composition of the atmosphere does not change with altitude. Gay-Lussac has also been featured on a French postage stamp third image.

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