Marc Delafontaine

Marc Abraham Dela Fontaine ( born March 31, 1838 in Céligny, † 1911) was a Swiss chemist.

Delafontaine studied chemistry at the Académie de Genève at Jean Charles de Galissard Marignac. In 1853 he became a teacher at the École Primaire in Geneva. From 1860 he was a private teacher of chemistry, then an assistant teacher of Chemistry, later teacher of organic chemistry at the Academy in Geneva. He was appointed in 1860 as Assistant Professor and then as Professor of Mineralogy and Organic Chemistry at the University of Geneva. In 1870 he was a professor of chemistry and toxicology at the Medical College for Women in Chicago, in 1874 he gave up this activity and devoted himself entirely to research on the rare earths.

Delafontaine discovered in 1878 by Jacques -Louis Soret, the element holmium.