Background
Chardonnet was born on May 1, 1839, in Besançon, France.
Route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau, France
Chardonnet was trained as a civil engineer and completed scientific studies under Louis Pasteur at the École Polytechnique.
Route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau, France
Chardonnet was trained as a civil engineer and completed scientific studies under Louis Pasteur at the École Polytechnique.
Chardonnet sculpture by his daughter Anne de Chardonnet
chemist engineer Industrialist scientist
Chardonnet was born on May 1, 1839, in Besançon, France.
Chardonnet was trained as a civil engineer and completed scientific studies under Louis Pasteur at the École Polytechnique.
Although Chardonnet was not the first to think of the possibility of making “artificial silk,” he was the pioneer of the technology necessary to establish the industry. The influences that prepared him for this, his most important contribution to science and technology, were his training as an engineer at the École Polytechnique and the work of his illustrious fellow townsman Louis Pasteur. In particular, Pasteur’s preoccupation at one time with a disease of the silkworm led Chardonnet, as he later said, to think of “imitating as closely as possible the work of the silkworm.” As a result he devised a process in which a solution of cellulose nitrate was extruded through very fine glass capillaries to form continuous filaments.
He applied for his first patent and submitted his memoir entitled “Une matière textile artificielle ressemblant à la soie” to the Academy of Sciences in 1884. After another five years, during which he was much concerned to reduce the flammability of his material, he felt his process and product were sufficiently developed for public display. In 1889 he was awarded the grand prize at the Paris Exposition. In the same year he established with the support of capitalists of his hometown, the Société de la Soie de Chardonnet at Besançon and another factory in Satvar, Hungary, in 1904. At the turn of the century the success of his company stimulated investigation of alternative materials and methods for the manufacture of “artificial silk” (later known as rayon), and these subsequently led to the replacement of Chardonnet silk.
Chardonnet made some minor contributions in other scientific fields, including studies of the absorption of ultraviolet light, telephony, and the behavior of the eyes of birds. He published no major work but presented all his researches in the Comptes rendus of the Academy of Sciences.
