Eugène-Melchior Péligot

Eugène- Melchior Peligot (* 1811 in Paris, † 1890 in Paris) was a French chemist who first isolated uranium metal in 1841.

Peligot showed that the black powder that Martin Heinrich Klaproth had isolated, no pure metal, but uranium (IV ) oxide ( UO2) was. He succeeded in the production of pure uranium by the reduction of uranium ( IV ) chloride ( UCl4 ) with metallic potassium.

Peligot was a professor of analytical chemistry at the Institut National Agronomique. He worked with Jean -Baptiste Dumas, with whom he shared the methyl radical discovered in experiments with methanol. The name alcool méthylique (methanol) was introduced by the two chemists. They also provided the first diethyl ether and ester many dar. In 1838, managed the conversion of camphor in p- cymene with phosphorus pentoxide.