Franz Karl Achard
Franz Carl Achard - in other notation François Charles Achard - (* April 28, 1753 in Berlin, † April 20, 1821 in Cunern, Silesia ) was a German scientist, a descendant of French religious refugees. He developed the technique for the production of sugar from sugar beets. In 1802 he established in Prussia the first viable beet sugar factory in the world.
- 2.1 Scientific Activities
- 2.2 Sugar production
Private life
The Early Years
Achard was born into a family social well-respected and financially well-to Huguenots. The ancestors had fled from the Dauphiné in south-eastern France to Geneva, after 1685 the Edict of Nantes was revoked. In Geneva, studied theology Guillaume Achard's father, in 1743 he came to Berlin and got a job at the Kirche of the French community. Members of the family occupied as lawyers, theologians and bankers, as well as members of the Royal. Prussian Academy of Sciences prominent positions in the French colony of Berlin. Guillaume Achard died in 1755, just two years after the birth of his son. His widow, Marguerite married in 1759 in second marriage to Charles Gobelinproduzenten Vigne.
About childhood and youth Achards little is known. He had probably acquired scientific knowledge as an autodidact and started at age 19 to work in this field. 1774, at age 21, he was inducted into the "Company Nature of Research Friends " in Berlin. " That this gentleman can just live off his money and only work to his liking " The acts of the company noted. 1775 Achard sent examples of his scientific investigations to King Frederick II and was awarded with the benevolent support in 1776 a position as an assistant at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, in the chemistry laboratory of Andreas Sigismund Marggraf. The content, however, was granted to him only in 1778, after repeated requests and intercession of their own colleagues.
Complicated relationships
At the time of his appointment, so even without their own income, Achard pursued marriage plans, obviously against strong resistance in its environment. The bride came from middle-class family, had no assets, was not a member of the French Reformed Church, was nine years older than her groom, divorced and has a daughter from his first marriage. Achard family regarded the connection as crass Mesalliance. Even Jean Henri Samuel Formey, the permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences, warned the young man to think of his great name, and not to offend his family. Finally Achard immediately wrote on 20 September 1776 the king: "In order to avoid the distractions and wastes that are almost inextricably linked to the life of a bachelor and so dangerous for those who prove to be devoted to the studies, I beg Your Majesty very respectfully, to do me the grace that will allow me to combine my way through marriage with Maria Louisa Kuhn, born in Frankfurt an der Oder. ... Some people in my family ... are with my choice completely dissatisfied. "In his brief response, the king informed the petitioner with, " that he can keep it because of his marriage as he wants it, and does not have necessary ... to inquire about it by his Majesty is not concerned. "
Achard rated this notification as agreement. On 20 October 1776, he married - a surprise for the family and also for the French congregation, because the wedding took place in the Garrison Church, in the parish of the military. There, issues of social status and civic life models have traditionally been considered more generous than elsewhere, especially as in the French Reformed. But subsequently also authorized the French community this marriage. The disapproval of the family found a concrete expression in the fact that various wills were changed to the disadvantage of the newlyweds.
The marriage did not last long, in 1783 the wife demanded a divorce. After the rejection by the court of the French colony, misslungenem reconciliation date and futile appeal to the king, who referred the case back to the courts, the marriage was finally divorced yet; the exact date is not known. As a result, Achard's private life became more complicated. With his stepdaughter, he began extramarital affair, the newly 17 -year-old got a daughter in 1787, then in 1791 a son by her stepfather. The operation was considered scandalous, Achard's relatives and colleagues kept their distance.
At this time lived Achard in the Berlin Dorotheenstadt, from 1792 in addition to his estate in French beech wood. It is impossible to say exactly how long he lived with his step- daughter. For 1796 there is evidence that he had started a community with a maid, with whom he had two children also, and at least until 1801 resulted in a common household. In 1802 he left Berlin to pursue his project of a beet sugar factory in Cunern in the Prussian Lower Silesia. There he lived with his four legitimate children, most likely without the two mothers.
Professional life
Scientific Activities
With colleagues and observers he created so occasional doubts about the seriousness of his scientific activities.
The study of electricity was a scientific fad since the tests Luigi Galvani. Achard repeated the experiments that led even conceived experiments - including unsuccessful efforts to cure deafness due to power surges - and told the king thereof, and of the hope that the electric force could help to influence the disorder of the nervous system. Frederick replied: " ... If you are able to procure electricity through the stupid mind, you are more than your weight in gold ... ". Achard examined different types of gases evolved oxygen blower to melt metals with them and bring healthier air in the sick room of the Charité, explored metals and minerals, and published a tabular work about it. He succeeded for the first time, to melt platinum.
At the request of the king, he worked in the 1780s because, to investigate native plants for their usefulness for dyeing textiles to reduce the cost of importing expensive foreign dyes as possible. He made Berlin dyers in talks with new features and subtleties of the trade familiar to the series of lectures he had to repeat several times. Like other members of the Academy also held Achard in the evening public lectures on the subjects of his research. His events were extremely popular. With hands-on experiments, he promoted the knowledge primarily through physical processes and the interest - a precursor of the University of Berlin operation. Achard in 1778 was elected to the Leopoldina.
Achard undertook field trials with English and French grasses with which the food supply of farm animals should be improved. And again, on behalf of Frederick II, he researched on a test area of about five acres in Lichtenberg in Berlin, ways to make foreign tobaccos in Prussia home or to improve local varieties, " to see in the words of the king how the allhier reussiert and whether it is written to operate in the Great on. " Concrete results are not known, but the king must have been pleased because he had Achard a pension of 500 thalers annually remit - " for his services to improve the domestic tobacco culture".
1795 Achard constructed a transportable field telegraph and tested it between Spandau and Berlin. The year before, the first optical telegraph line was established between Paris and Lille, they used a system of mechanical signal elements with movable arms. Achard now suggested to forward messages with the help of geometric figures. He translated 2375 words and phrases in such signs and wore it in a Franco-German telegraph lexicon. He did not see that success, in Prussia couriers were still used because this gave even at night and in poor visibility. But the Frenchman Claude Chappe, the inventor, in 1805 took his own life after the priority was denied him in his work in public.
Achard was a lightning rod mount on some Berlin private homes, as well on the German and the French Cathedral. He learned of the successful attempts by the brothers Montgolfier hot air balloons and sent only months later, at the turn of 1783/84, several times gas-and air-filled balloons in the Berlin sky. His audience, which had been asked for donations, said she was disappointed: the balloon landed in invisible distance, others burst already during the ascent. Overall, however, was Achard, who had been entrusted to the Academy in addition to organizational and administrative tasks and often worked to exhaustion, a publicly recognized, even famous man, a member of numerous scientific societies at home and abroad. The Royal. Bavarian Academy of Sciences about had appointed him in 1778 for foreign members.
Sugar production
Throughout his work, Franz Carl Achard was more experimenter and organizer as a theorist. So it was only logical that he reached its greatest effect and its place in history through the development of a new technique and its testing in the (pre) industrial practice. 1747 his teacher, the chemist Marggraf had first detected the sugar content of the beet and presented his discovery in a lecture at the Academy, but this approach is not pursued further. Very probably knew Achard research results.
In 1782 he took up the theme and bought the small estate Kaulsdorf in the southeast of Berlin. There he began the following year with his experiments " sugar from European plants to win with advantage." He built many different plants at, examined them for their suitability and decided to use the beet, to optimize it by further culturing for his purposes. After a break of several years - Kaulsdorf was burned down in 1786 - sat Achard his attempts in 1792 continued, now at his estate in French beech wood near Berlin. In an entry dated January 11, 1799, he informed the king that he was now confident that we can win sugar from beets and asked for a larger loan.
A sample of refined sugar obtained in the Berliner sugar mill he added. Apparently detected Friedrich Wilhelm III. and his advisors the potential of this project and approved only four days later, the considerable sum of 50,000 thalers. Achard then acquired by Count Maximilian von Pueckler the Good Cunern ( Konary ), located near the Oder in Poland today, and prepared the production front. 1801 250 tons of beets were harvested and processed there in the following year in new technical systems that had developed Achard, and ordered to sugar. In March 1802, the beet sugar factory delivered the finished product.
In 1806, during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, the factory and some buildings of the estate fell victim to a fire, Achard was ruined and had to borrow heavily. It was not until 1810 governed the king his debt. The production facilities were built in small scale again and served from 1812 to 1815 as an educational institution for the production of beet sugar in the foreign students were taught. Achard's health was now severely attacked. He spent his final years under oppressive conditions. He died on April 20, 1821, impoverished and largely forgotten. No obituary recalled his life and his achievements. In Berlin Sugar Museum a bust in the entrance to his work. In the cemetery of Herrnmotschelnitz (Polish Moczydlnica Dworska ), a district of Wohlau (Polish Wolów ), is his grave remains largely intact.
Effects and ratings
Very soon in Germany with some delay only in the 1830s, the sugar production developed on the basis of what Achard had devised and practiced, to a thriving, highly efficient industry. She was pacing for different production processes of the early machine age. Extraction, filtration, evaporation and crystallization, centrifugal technique, drying and multiple Abdampfverwertung could also be applied in other industries.
The industrial production of beet sugar threatened and finally ended the monopoly of the sugar cane -producing colonial powers. Already at the beginning of this development, there had been apparently attempts to bribe Achard. At least one historical source reported English cane sugar manufacturers would have 200 000 dollars offered to him in the event that he would explain his successful experiments on a small scale as definitely unsuitable for industrial evaluation and stop working on it.
Achard's eventful private life is the focus of a case study on " Marriage and living in cohabitation end of the 18th century " (see web link). Here is first covered with figures that in the last third of the 18th century in Berlin a notable percentage decline in the marriage rate and correspondingly an increase in illegitimate children were observed. The doctor Ludwig Formey notes, this is particularly true for the "thinking class, since the other the natural instincts about can be, without having to bother about the purpose and consequences of marriage ... ". The biography Achard is used to control the behavior of the environment - to shed light on deviation of marriage behavior in the academic world - family, church, fellow citizens.
Judgments of contemporaries
After Achard had sent a content request to King Frederick II on 15 November 1777 was the answer in a Cabinet Order on November 16, 1777: " The king is not sufficiently aware of the talent and literary merits of his academician Achard, His Majesty wishes that its Academy of Sciences they do especially well known to him so that over Achards enclosed in the original application can be decided. "
The Academy Directors Marggraf, Lagrange, Merian and Sulzer reported on November 18, 1777: "Your Majesty has commanded us to inform you of the talents and academic merit of Mr. Achard We can provide him in this respect, only the most favorable testimony ... .. As a student of director Marggraf in chemistry he has made in this science, for which he feels a true passion, considerable progress. Equally, he has distinguished himself in other branches of experimental physics, where there is nothing that escapes him and in which he spares neither trouble nor expense, and even takes no account of his health. he has delivered on all of these areas treatises that were applauded by the experts ... "
Academician Dieudonnee Thiébault wrote in his "Memoirs " on Achard: "I have seen how he has nine times 24 hours behind the other in his laboratory to pursue the same experiment I have seen how he defied all the rigors of the season and all. spent days to examine their procedures for the improvement of tobacco culture and so aufstellte from the results obtained by him 23 000 Three sets under field conditions. He showed us a plan of 40 000 to be carried out tests in order to disassemble or assemble all known rock types as desired can. I have finally seen it many imaginary sent and both precise and responsive, as well as useful machines of the Academy presented etc. Monsieur Achard has achieved a lot because he has as much stamina as zeal and because he devotes himself with these advantages fully of science. "
( The originals of the three texts cited were written in French)
Works
- The European sugar production from beets, in connection with the preparation of rum, vinegar and a coffee surrogate of their waste, 3 parts; Reprint of the edition of 1809; Bartensleben, Berlin 1985; ISBN 3-87040-034 -X