Henri Victor Regnault

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Henri Victor Regnault

Henri Victor Regnault (July 21, 1810 – January 19, 1878) was a French

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
chemist and physicist best known for his careful measurements of the thermal properties of gases. He was an early thermodynamicist

Thermodynamicist

In thermodynamics, a thermodynamicist is one who studies thermodynamic processes and phenomena, i.e. the physics that deals with mechanical action and relations of heat....
and was mentor to William Thomson

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin , Order of Merit , Royal Victorian Order, Privy Council of the United Kingdom, Presidents of the Royal Society, Royal Society of Edinburgh, was an Ireland-born United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Mathematical physics and engineer....
in the late 1840s.
in Aachen

Aachen

is a historic spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the westernmost city of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, 65 km west of Cologne....
in 1810, he moved to Paris

Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
following the death of his parents at the age of eight. There, he worked for an upholstery firm until he was eighteen.

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Encyclopedia

Henri Victor Regnault (July 21, 1810 – January 19, 1878) was a French

France

Thermodynamicist

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

Biography

Born in Aachen

Aachen

Paris

École Polytechnique

The ?cole Polytechnique , often referred to by the nickname X, is the foremost France grande ?cole of engineering . Founded in 1794 and initially located in the Quartier Latin in central Paris, it was moved to Palaiseau in 1976....
, and in 1832 he graduated from the École des mines

École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris

The ?cole Nationale Sup?rieure des Mines de Paris was created in 1783 by King Louis XVI of France in order to train intelligent directors of mines....
.

Working under Justus von Liebig

Justus von Liebig

Justus von Liebig was a German chemist who made major contributions to agriculture and biology chemistry, and worked on the organization of organic chemistry....
at Gießen

Gießen

Gie?en is a town in the States of Germany of Hessen, capital of both the Gie?en and the Gie?en . The population is approximately 71,000, with roughly 22,000 university students....
, Regnault distinguished himself in the nascent field of organic chemistry

Organic chemistry

Organic chemistry is a discipline within chemistry which involves the science study of the structure, properties, composition, chemical reaction, and preparation of chemical compounds that contain carbon....
by synthesizing several chlorinated

Chlorine

Chlorine...
hydrocarbons (e.g. vinyl chloride

Vinyl chloride

Vinyl chloride is the organic compound with the formula CH2:CHCl. This colourless compound is an important industrial chemical chiefly used to produce the polymer polyvinyl chloride ....
, polyvinyl chloride

Polyvinyl chloride

Polyvinyl chloride, commonly abbreviated PVC, is the third most widely used thermoplastic polymer after polyethylene and polypropylene....
, dichloromethane

Dichloromethane

Dichloromethane or methylene chloride is the chemical compound with the chemical formula CarbonHydrogen2Chlorine2....
), and he was appointed professor of chemistry at the University of Lyon

Lyon

||-||}Lyon, also known as Lyons in English, is a city in east-central France. Its name is pronounced in French language and Franco-Proven?al language, and or in English language....
. In 1840, he was appointed the chair of chemistry of the Ecole Polytechnique, and in 1841, he became a professor of Physics in the College de France

Collège de France

The Coll?ge de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Ecoles....
.

Beginning in 1843, he began compiling extensive numerical tables on the properties of steam. These were published in 1847, and led to his receiving the Rumford Medal

Rumford Medal

The Rumford Medal is awarded by the Royal Society every alternating year for "an outstandingly important recent discovery in the field of thermal or optical properties of matter made by a scientist working in Europe"....
of the Royal Society of London and appointment as Chief Engineer of Mines. In 1854 he was appointed director of the porcelain

Porcelain

Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and ....
works at Sèvres

Sèvres

S?vres is a Communes of France in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 9.9 km from the Kilometre Zero.The town is known for its porcelain manufacture, the Manufacture nationale de S?vres, making the famous S?vres porcelain, as well as being the location of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures,...
.

At Sèvres, he continued work on the thermal properties of matter. He designed sensitive thermometer

Thermometer

The thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient using a variety of different principles; it comes from the Greek language roots thermo, heat, and meter, to measure....
s, hygrometer

Hygrometer

Hygrometers are instruments used for measuring relative humidity. A simple form of a hygrometer is specifically known as a psychrometer and consists of two thermometers, one of which includes a dry bulb and the other of which includes a bulb that is kept wet to measure wet-bulb temperature....
s, hypsometer

Hypsometer

A Hypsometer is an instrument for measuring height or altitude. Many different physical principles may be used.A simple scale hypsometer allows the height of a building or tree to be measured by sighting across a ruler to the base and top of the object being measured, when the distance from the object to the observer is known....
s and calorimeter

Calorimeter

| |}A calorimeter is a device used for calorimetry, the science of measuring the heat of chemical reactions or physical changes as well as heat capacity....
s, and measured the specific heats of many substances and the coefficient of thermal expansion

Coefficient of thermal expansion

When the temperature of a substance changes, the energy that is stored in the intermolecular bonds between atoms changes. When the stored energy increases, so does the length of the molecular bonds....
of gases. In the course of this work, he discovered that not all gases expand equally when heated and that Boyle's Law

Boyle's law

Boyle's law is one of several gas laws and a special case of the ideal gas law. Boyle's law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system....
is only an approximation, especially at temperatures near a substance's boiling point.

Regnault was also an avid amateur photographer

Photography

Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving by recording radiation on a sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an ....
. He introduced the use of pyrogallic acid as a developing agent, and was one of the first photographers to use paper negatives. In 1854, he became the founding president of the Société Française de Photographie.

In 1871, his laboratory at Sèvres was destroyed and his son Alex-Georges-Henri Regnault killed, both as a result of the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between Second French Empire and Kingdom of Prussia, while Prussia was backed by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Grand Duchy of Baden, History of W?rttemberg#The Kingdom...
. He retired from science the next year, never recovering from these losses.

The crater Regnault

Regnault (crater)

Regnault is a Moon impact crater that is located close to the northwest limb of the Moon. It lies across the western rim of the walled plain Volta , with the slightly smaller crater Stokes attached to the southern outer rim....
on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
is named after him. Some have suggested that the symbol R for the ideal gas constant is also named after him.