Life
Joseph L. Proust was born on September 26, 1754 in Angers, France. His father served as an apothecary in Angers. Joseph studied chemistry in his father’s shop and later came to Paris where he gained the appointment of apothecary in chief to the Salpetriere . He also taught chemistry with Pilâtre de Rozier, a famous aeronaut.
Under Carlos IV's influence Proust went to Spain. There he taught at the Chemistry School in Segovia and at the University of Salamanca. But when Napoleon invaded Spain, they burned Proust's laboratory and forced him back to France. On July 5 1826 he died in Angers, France.The mineral proustite (Ag3AsS3) is named in his honour.
Proust's best known work was derived from a controversy with C.L. Berthollet. Berthollet did not believe that substances always combine in constant and definite proportions as Proust did. Proust eventually was able to prove Berthollet wrong in 1799 and published his own hypothesis.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Proust
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“I know nothing which life has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding, which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifications, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches, cheap.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground.... So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)