This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Jean Stas is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| Jean Stas | |
 Jean Stas
|
|
| Born | August 21, 1813 Leuven |
|---|---|
| Died | December 13, 1891 |
| Nationality | Belgian |
| Fields | chemist |
| Influences | Jean-Baptiste Dumas |
Jean Servais Stas (August 21, 1813 - December 13, 1891) was a Belgian analytical chemist.
Stas was born in Leuven and trained initially as a physician. He later switched to chemistry and worked at the École Polytechnique in Paris under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Dumas. Stas and Dumas established the atomic weight of carbon by weighing a sample of the pure material, burning it in pure oxygen, and then weighing the carbon dioxide produced.
In 1840, Stas was appointed professor at the Royal Military School in Brussels. He acquired international fame by establishing the atomic weights of the elements more accurately than had ever been done before, using oxygen = 16 as a standard. His results disproved the hypothesis of the English physicist William Prout that all atomic weights must be integral multiples of that of hydrogen. These careful, accurate atomic weight measurements of Stas helped lay the foundation for the periodic system of elements of Dmitri Mendeleev and others.
Stas retired in 1869 because of problems with his voice caused by a throat ailment. He became commissioner of the mint, but resigned in 1872 because he disagreed with the government's monetary policy. Jean Stas died in Brussels and was buried at Leuven.
Bibliography
- Œuvres complètes (3 dln., uitg. d. L.W. Spring en J.B. Depaire, 1894).
Further reading
- Timmermans, Jean (1938). "Jean Servais Stas". Journal of Chemical Education 15: 353 – 357.- translated into English by Ralph Oesper
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 15 October 2008, at 17:45.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Jean Stas".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.