Henri Moissan
Ferdinand Frederic Henri Moissan ( born September 28, 1852 in Paris, † February 20, 1907 ) was a French chemist.
Life
Moissan was a French chemist. First, he worked at the Science Museum in the laboratory of Natural Resources, 1883 Head of the practical work and in 1886 professor at the higher school of Pharmacy, and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Paris. He worked on the cyanogen compounds, the oxides of iron, chromium compounds, fluorine compounds, on the carbides, silicides, etc. Hydrüre
Became world famous Moissan, as the electrochemical extraction of elementary fluorine from pure anhydrous hydrofluoric acid / potassium fluoride in a platinum apparatus he succeeded on 26 June 1886 several attempts at minus 50 ° Celsius. The apparatus he later replaced by a copper device that generated five liters of fluorine / h. The discovery led to the award of the prestigious " Prix La Caze " by the French Academy of Sciences. Even pure boron, he established the first. In 1893, he produced a small, artificial diamonds.
1904 Moissan discovered in meteorite crater Barringer Crater, Arizona a hitherto unknown mineral that is very close in its properties to that of diamond and is considered the second hardest naturally occurring material. It was named after its discoverer Moissanite.
After Moissan had shown in 1892 that he had developed electric oven is suitable for the production of carbides, most of which were unknown until then, its use has become increasingly popular. With it, some elements with high purity could be obtained and also be separated from alloys.
In 1902 he succeeded the proof of silicon - hydrogen compound Monosilane after acidic degradation ( proteolysis ) of lithium silicide. Moissan was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of the great services he has rendered by his investigation and isolation of the element fluorine, as well as by the introduction of the electric furnace named after him in the service of science."
His experimental setup for the production of fluorine