Le Chatelier attended a military academy in Paris for a short time before enrolling at the Collège Rollin (now Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour), from which he received his Bachelor of Letters degree in 1867 and his Bachelor of Science in 1868.
College/University
Gallery of Henry Le Chatelier
Route de Saclay, 91120 Palaiseau, France
In 1869 Le Chatelier entered the École Polytechnique. His studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served as a lieutenant in the army.
Gallery of Henry Le Chatelier
60 Boulevard Saint-Michel, 75272 Paris, France
Le Chatelier resumed his academic work in 1871, enrolling in the École des Mines, as he planned to make a career in government administration, graduating in 1873.
Le Chatelier attended a military academy in Paris for a short time before enrolling at the Collège Rollin (now Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour), from which he received his Bachelor of Letters degree in 1867 and his Bachelor of Science in 1868.
In 1869 Le Chatelier entered the École Polytechnique. His studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served as a lieutenant in the army.
Le Chatelier resumed his academic work in 1871, enrolling in the École des Mines, as he planned to make a career in government administration, graduating in 1873.
Henry Louis Le Chatelier was a French chemist. He devised Le Chatelier's principle, used by chemists and chemical engineers to predict the effect a changing condition has on a system in chemical equilibrium.
Background
Le Chatelier was born on October 8, 1850, in Paris. He was the son of French materials engineer Louis Le Chatelier and Louis Durand. He had one sister, Marie, and four brothers, Louis, Alfred, George, and André. On his father’s side, Le Chatelier came from a line of scientists and technologists, while his mother’s ancestors were artists, sculptors, architects, and geographers. His maternal grandfather, Pierre Durand, operated lime kilns and was a friend of Louis Vicat, a specialist in synthetic cements. Two of Le Chatelier’s uncles were engineers, one was an architect, and one a specialist in African affairs who helped to form French governmental policy in this field.
His father Louis was inspector general of mines for France and the engineer responsible for building much of the French railway system. A strong Republican, he resigned when Napoleon III became emperor and thereafter acted as an advisor in the construction of railroads in Austria and Spain. He was associated with Deville in establishing and aluminum industry in France and with W. Siemens in building the first open-hearth steel furnace. The leading chemists of France frequently visited his home.
Thus young Le Chatelier grew up in an atmosphere in which science and technology met on equal terms. Even in his youth, he was allowed to work for a time in Deville’s laboratory. He later said that his contacts with these friends of his father were important influences in shaping his career and establishing his reputation as a chemist. The other significant influence on his life was his mother, who raised her children according to a strict schedule and instilled in them a sense of order and discipline reinforced by the somewhat rigid training obtained in French technical schools. It is not surprising that due to their father’s activities all the children in the family were associated with scientific or technological employment throughout their lives or, in view of his mother’s strictness, that Henry remained a scientific and political conservative. All his life he was more interested in confirming natural laws than in overthrowing them.
Education
Le Chatelier attended a military academy in Paris for a short time before enrolling at the Collège Rollin (now Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour), from which he received his Bachelor of Letters degree in 1867 and his Bachelor of Science in 1868. In 1869 he entered the École Polytechnique. Even in his student days, he showed his originality and his feeling for the importance of an experimental rather than a theoretical approach to science. With some of his fellow students, he designed a course in physics-based entirely on the positivism of Comte and eliminating all abstract entities such as force.
His studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, in which he served as a lieutenant in the army. He resumed his academic work in 1871, enrolling in the École des Mines, as he planned to make a career in government administration, graduating in 1873.
After graduation in 1873, Le Chatelier spent several years traveling, chiefly in North Africa in connection with a government plan to create an inland sea in that region. In 1875 he took up the duties of a mining engineer at Besançon.
In 1877 Le Chatelier's career underwent a sharp change. Daubrée, the director of the École des Mines, did not know him personally, but he did know his father and had noted that the son had done well in chemistry while in the school. He, therefore, offered Le Chatelier the position of professor of general chemistry. He accepted the offer and remained at the institution until his retirement in 1919. At first, he taught only chemistry but later added metallurgy to his subjects. He received the degree of Doctor of Physical and Chemical Science in 1887, at which time his title was changed to professor of industrial chemistry and metallurgy. In the same year, he accepted the chair of chemistry at the Collège de France and retained the post until 1908. In 1907 he succeeded Moissan as professor of general chemistry at the Sorbonne and held the chair until becoming and honorary professor in 1925. In this post, he was able to direct the researches of graduate students. During his active years between 1908 and 1922, he directed the work of more than a hundred students, twenty-four of whom received their doctorates under his supervision. His lectures were very popular, and several were afterward published as books.
Le Chatelier was always interested in the organization of science, especially in relation to its industrial applications. In particular, he attended many international congresses devoted to industrial problems. During his life, he held increasingly important positions on a large number of commissions and boards to advise the government on scientific and technical questions. Among these were the Commission on Explosives, the National Science Bureau, the Commission on Weights and Measures, the Commission on Standardization of Metallic Products, the Commission on Inventions, and the Committee for the Control of French Monetary Circulation. In 1916 President Wilson appointed him advisor in the establishment of the National Research Council in the United States.
In 1907 he was appointed inspector general of mines and became a member of the Académie des Sciences. He received medals and honors from almost every French scientific and engineering society and from numerous foreign countries including Poland, Russia, England, and United States, He also held honorary doctorates from the universities of Aix-la Chapelle (Aachen), Manchester, Louvain and Madrid and the Technical University of Denmark.
In his later years, Le Chatelier devoted himself of writing on philosophical and social questions, and activity which he continued until his death at his country estate at the age of almost eighty-six.
The research activities of Le Chatelier were many and varied and at first glance, it would seem that there was little relation between some of them. Yet, as is often the case with scientists, there was continuity, and it is possible to see how on line of study led to another.
During World War I, Le Chatelier served as an advisor to the government on many military matters. He was influential in a metallurgical study of the heat treatment of shell cases. After the war, he gradually withdrew from extensive laboratory work, although he continued to publish short notes on scientific subjects. His writings were always influential and clearly show his interest in the industrial applications of science. Thus Leçons sur le carbone, published from his lectures at the Sorbonne, opens with a discussion of the meaning of science and scientific laws. He then describes the various forms of carbon, leading up to a discussion of fuels ad metallic carbides. The industrial uses of these materials are described. A survey of oxides of carbon and the carbonates leads to a consideration of the laws of equilibrium, including a description of his own work. The book concludes with a section on atomic and molecular weights, although Le Chatelier avoids descriptions in atomic terms. Historical examples are given throughout.
After his retirement, he spent much time in consideration of problems of intellectual and moral education. He stressed the importance of literature and Latin as part of general education and campaigned for restraint of political expenditures and better coordination of science and industry. Le Chatelier's last paper, on which he was working at the time of his death, was entitled “Morals and Human Affairs.”
Achievements
Le Chatelier is best known for Le Chatelier’s principle, which makes it possible to predict the effect a change of conditions (such as temperature, pressure, or concentration of reaction components) will have on a chemical reaction. His principle proved invaluable in the chemical industry for developing the most-efficient chemical processes.
Le Chatelier was politically conservative. However, in spite of certain anti-parliamentarian convictions, he kept away from any extremist or radical movements.
Views
Le Chatelier never recognized a distinction between pure and applied science, and many of his most fruitful ideas came from industrial problems.
He was always interested in the advancement of the science of metallurgy in France. Realizing the lack of a good textbook he arranged for the committee on alloys that he had organized to publish a volume, Contributionàl’études alliages, containing papers by leading French metallurgists. Several of Le Chatelier's own contributions were included. For a long time, it was the only really good textbook on metallurgy available in France. Le Chatelier was also aware that, while both England and Germany had special metallurgical journals, none existed in France. Therefore in 1904, he founded the Revue de métallurgie, which he edited until 1914. In the publication of this journal, he was aided by his daughters, especially Genevieève, who died in 1923, the only one of his children who did not survive him.
After World War I Le Chatelier became increasingly concerned with sociological and philosophical questions. In his lectures, he had always stressed the importance of general principles rather than merely listing chemical compounds and their properties. He was sometimes accused of teaching physics rather than chemistry. Nevertheless, he could not accept theories that appeared to him to lack experimental foundation. As he had avoided the concept of force in physics during his student days, so in later life he avoided the use of atomic theory as much as possible. Since he worked almost entirely with inorganic compounds, he was not concerned with questions of structure, and so was able to consider atoms merely as useful pedagogic tools without deciding whether or not they actually existed.
Membership
Académie des Sciences
,
France
1907
Connections
Le Chatelier married Geneviève Nicolas in 1876, and their seven children carried on the family traditions. The three sons became engineers, the four daughters married into the same profession.
Father:
Louis Le Chatelier
He was a French chemist and industrialist who developed a method for producing aluminium from bauxite in 1855.
Mother:
Louise Durand
Spouse:
Geneviève Nicolas
Brother:
Louis Le Chatelier
Brother:
André Le Chatelier
Brother:
Alfred Le Chatelier
He exerted considerable influence over French policy towards the Muslim subjects of France's colonial empire, arguing for policy based on solidly documented facts, and for tolerance and sympathy to the rapidly changing Muslim societies.
