Background
Edmond Fremy was born on February 28, 1814, in Versailles, France.
France
A Portrait of Edmond Fremy
France
Edmond Fremy
Edmond Fremy was born on February 28, 1814, in Versailles, France.
Edmond was educated at the laboratory of Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac.
Fremy began his career at the École Polytechnique as assistant to Pelouze and succeeded him as professor in 1846. He also became professor at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle when Gay-Lussac died in 1850 and was elected its director after Chevreul retired in 1879.
Fremy’s first project was to continue Pelouze’s studies of iron oxides, and he expanded them to include oxides of chromium, tin, and antimony that form salts with alkalies in the same way as manganese. In 1835 he published a memoir in the Annales de chimie on the splitting of fats by sulfuric acid, a process that was adopted by French industry. From then on, Fremy pursued scientific investigations as professor and industrial work as consultant. He proposed improvements in the chamber process for making sulfuric acid, and he introduced the residue from burning pyrites as the raw material for iron production. From research on the setting of hydraulic cement, Fremy proceeded to the synthesis of rubies by heating alumina with potassium chromate and barium fluoride.
At the museum, from 1850 until 1879, he sought to prove the transformation of plant materials, especially “vasculose” (cellulose), into coal by way of lignite and ulmic acid.
Together with Pelouze, Fremy published a textbook that saw several editions until 1865. Then he organized the collaboration of professors and industrialists on a chemical encyclopedia, which appeared in ninety-one parts between 1882 and 1901.
(Volume 1)
1890(Volume 2)
1891(Volume 3)
1892Fremy was a member of the French Academy of Sciences.