Background
Antoine Baumé was born on February 26, 1728, in Senlis, France. The son of Guillaume Baumé, who ran two inns in Senlis, Antoine Baumé seems to have had the advantages of a fairly well-to-do home.
1773
Chymie expérimentale et raisonnée by Antoine Baumé.
1773
Illustration from the Chymie expérimentale et raisonnée by Antoine Baumé.
École de Pharmacie, 4, avenue de l'Observatoire 75006 Paris, France
In 1752 Antoine Baumé was admitted a member of the École de Pharmacie.
chemist pharmacist scientist scholars
Antoine Baumé was born on February 26, 1728, in Senlis, France. The son of Guillaume Baumé, who ran two inns in Senlis, Antoine Baumé seems to have had the advantages of a fairly well-to-do home.
Baumé was apprenticed to the chemist Claude Joseph Geoffroy, and in 1752 was admitted a member of the École de Pharmacie, where in the same year he was appointed professor of chemistry.
About 1743 Antoine Baumé was apprenticed to a pharmacist in Compiègne, but by 1745 he was working in C. J. Geoffroy’s dispensary in Paris, where he was able to indulge and develop his interest in theoretical chemistry as well as in pharmacy. In 1752 he became maître apothicaire, and opened his own dispensary in the Rue St.-Denis, Paris, the following year; it was moved to the Rue Coquillère in 1762.
In addition to its role as a local pharmacy, Baumé’s dispensary supplied drugs in bulk to pharmacies and hospitals over a very wide area and manufactured drugs and other chemicals in large quantities.
In 1767 he began the first large-scale production of sal ammoniac in France; he doubtless owed something in this connection to Geoffroy, who had been the first in France to make sal ammoniac. Baumé also supplied industrial and laboratory apparatus, some of which he designed himself. In particular, his areometer (1768) was an important step forward, in that it possessed a scale having two fixed points (the density of distilled water and that of a salt solution of known concentration), thus enabling properly calibrated instruments to be produced. In 1777, Baumé won first prize for an essay on the best furnaces, alembics, and other apparatus to be used in the distillation of wine.
In 1757, Baumé and Macquer began a series of courses in chemistry and pharmacy that continued for sixteen years. Baumé equipped the laboratory, supplied the funds, and prepared all the experiments to be carried out. An outline of this course, Plan d’un cours de chymie expérimentale et raisonnée, was published in 1757. Apart from this, Baumé published a number of works on chemistry and pharmacy that ran into several editions. He also contributed to the Dictionnaire des arts et métiers (1766).
From 1755 until the end of his life, Baumé produced many memoirs, the first of these being a dissertation on ether. Baumé’s many disputes nearly cost him membership in the Académie des Sciences, but he was finally elected as adjoint-chimiste on 25 December 1772; he became associé in 1778 and pensionnaire in 1785.
With the coming of the Revolution, Baumé lost his fortune, including his pension as a member of the Academy, but in 1795, as a result of an appeal to the Committee of Public Instruction, he received a sum of money that enabled him to open another dispensary in 1796. At the newly formed Institut de France, he obtained only a place as associé non résidant, which carried a minimum of privileges.
( )
1797Baumé resisted the new theories in chemistry until the end of his life. He remained a determined phlogistonist - as late as 1797 he stated quite categorically that water could not be decomposed.
In 1752 Antoine Baumé was admitted a member of the École de Pharmacie. He became a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1772.