César-Mansuète Despretz

Cesar Mansuète Despretz (* 1789/92 in Lessines, Belgium, † March 15, 1863 in Paris) was a Belgian- French physicist.

Life and work

Despretz studied chemistry and physics in Paris. He became a teacher in Bruges, after the Restoration in France (1814 /15) professor of physics at the École polytechnique and 1824 at the Collège Henri IV in Paris. In 1822 he was made ​​first mustard gas. In 1827 he recognized the inaccuracy of the Mariottschen law for real gases. He developed his own apparatus for pressure measurement. In 1837 he obtained the chair of physics at the Sorbonne and the following year the French citizenship. From 1841 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. He worked on batteries and came up with the idea in 1849 to exploit the temperature of the electric arc. He built a carbon retort. The negative pole of the arc formed a carbon rod, the retort was the positive pole.