Background
Ernest Fourneau was born on October 4, 1872, in Biarritz, France. His grandfather, the owner of a spinning mill, had established himself in France in the Basque country. His parents managed a large hotel in Biarritz.
Paris, France
A portrait of Ernest Fourneau
4 Avenue de l'Observatoire, 75006 Paris, France
In 1898 Ernest obtained his diploma in Paris as a pharmacist.
Paris, France
Ernest Fourneau in the middle
Paris, France
Ernest Fourneau
Paris, France
Ernest Fourneau
chemist Pharmacologist scientist
Ernest Fourneau was born on October 4, 1872, in Biarritz, France. His grandfather, the owner of a spinning mill, had established himself in France in the Basque country. His parents managed a large hotel in Biarritz.
Ernest received an excellent education. He was fluent in English, German, and Spanish. He was interested in philosophy, literature, music, and painting, which he engaged in. Following his secondary studies in Bayonne, he began studying pharmacy with Félix Moureu. In 1898 he obtained his diploma in Paris as a pharmacist.
After graduating, Ernest worked with the chemist Charles Moureu. A witness to the birth of the German pharmaceutical industry, Fourneau returned to France and convinced the Poulenc brothers, Camille, Gaston, and Émile, of the necessity of creating a pharmaceutical chemistry laboratory. With the support of Camille Poulenc, he became the director of a laboratory in the factory at Ivry-sur-Seine. A born chemist and dextrous experimenter, there he was able to develop his talents. In 1904 he discovered an anesthetic that he named stovaine, a translation of the word fourneau (“stove”).
In 1911, Émile Roux was director of the Institut Pasteur. Always alert to scientific progress, he welcomed Fourneau into the Grande Maison and named him chief of the new therapeutic chemistry service, which rapidly became world famous. Fourneau surrounded himself with remarkable researchers: chemists, microbiologists, physiologists, and physicians, notably Jacques and Thérèse Tréfouël, and Daniel Bovet and Frédéric Nitti. The service became a center for chemotherapeutic research.
Fourneau reached retirement age in 1942 but continued to work at the Institut Pasteur until 1946. The Rhône-Poulenc chemical company then offered him a laboratory in Paris, where he continued his work. He was secretary-general of the Société Chimique de France, to which he gave great stimulus by his constant interest in the École de Pharmacie. During World War I Fourneau was entrusted by the ministries of war and munitions with the study of various topics for the general dispensary of military hospitals. In 1939 he was a member of the army’s scientific commissions, and his laboratory was joined to the general staff.
Fourneau published more than two hundred books, articles, and lectures in collaboration with other researchers on amino alcohols and ethylene oxides (stovaine). A master of this material, he was entrusted with the important chapter on it in the Traite de chimie organique of Victor Grignard. As early as 1910 he had summarized his investigations with enumerations and descriptions of amino alcohols, oxaminated acids, m-acetylamino p-oxyphenylarsenic acid or stovarsol, and its isomer tryparsamide. As a natural continuation of his work he turned to the alkaloids. He then studied corysanthine and glycerine esters and investigated the separation and the quantitative analysis of bismuth. Later he studied the stereochemistry of arsenic compounds, synthetic antipaludics, antihistamine derivatives and spasmolytics, and sulfur derivatives. He determined the formula of suramin sodium and its antibacterial action. Next he turned to the sulfamides (with the Tréfouëls, Bovet, and Nitti) and to sulfamidotherapy.
Fourneau was a member of the Académie de Medecine and of a number of other French and foreign academies.