Background
Macquer was born on October 9, 1718, in Paris, France, the elder son of Joseph Macquer and Marie-Anne Caillet.
15-21 Rue de l'École de Médecine, 75006 Paris, France
After graduating from the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1742 Macquer practiced for only a few years, being at one time doctor for the poor of the parishes of St. Nicolas and St. Sauveur, near his home in the rue St. Sauveur. He studied chemistry under Guillaume-François Rouelle and soon began to do research.
15-21 Rue de l'École de Médecine, 75006 Paris, France
After graduating from the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1742 Macquer practiced for only a few years, being at one time doctor for the poor of the parishes of St. Nicolas and St. Sauveur, near his home in the rue St. Sauveur. He studied chemistry under Guillaume-François Rouelle and soon began to do research.
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Theory-Practice-Chymistry-5th/dp/3752443073/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Pierre+Macquer&qid=1600156472&sr=8-1
1756
Macquer was born on October 9, 1718, in Paris, France, the elder son of Joseph Macquer and Marie-Anne Caillet.
An early interest in science was encouraged by one of Macquer's teachers, Charles Le Beau, a well-known historian; and Pierre-Joseph Macquer decided to devote himself to research. However, his parents insisted on his first qualifying in a profession, and he chose medicine. After graduating from the Paris Faculty of Medicine in 1742 he practiced for only a few years, being at one time doctor for the poor of the parishes of St. Nicolas and St. Sauveur, near his home in the rue St. Sauveur. He studied chemistry under Guillaume-François Rouelle and soon began to do research.
Rouelle had started lecturing at the Jardin du Roi in 1742, and his influence on French chemistry was yet to be felt. Since there were few experienced and able chemists competing for places in the Academy of Sciences, Macquer was elected in 1745, before reading his first published paper, on the solubility in alcohol of different oils. He was hoping to relate the changes that occurred in oils on rectification to the solubilities of various products, but his experiments and theoretical discussion contributed little to this difficult subject. He was on firmer ground in a later investigation of the solubilities of carefully dehydrated inorganic salts in alcohol (1766, 1773); his quantitative results were of value to chemists who used alcohol extraction in the analysis of residues from evaporated mineral waters.
The most important of Macquer’s early researches was his study in 1746 and 1748 of white arsenic, which he found to react with niter to form a previously unknown crystalline salt (potassium arsenate) that was quite different from the compound (potassium arsenite) obtained by dissolving white arsenic in potash. The new salt formed precipitates with metallic salts, and Macquer recognized that in them the metal was combined with the "arsenical part" of his compound. He did not, however, go so far as to assert that arsenic formed an acid although, by heating white arsenic with oil of vitriol (sulfuric acid), he had, in fact, prepared its anhydride as an "arsenical glass" that gave an acid solution in water.
Pastel and indigo were the only fast blue dyes used before 1749, when Macquer discovered a method of dyeing with Prussian blue, an insoluble substance used as an artists’ pigment. It was prepared by adding potash that had been calcined with animal matter to a solution of alum and green vitriol (ferrous sulfate), and Macquer, therefore, boiled skeins of flax, cotton, silk, and wool with alum and green vitriol, and dipped them into a solution of the specially treated potash. The specimens were dyed a dull blue, which brightened on rinsing in dilute sulfuric acid and proved to be fast for wool and silk. Macquer then attempted to analyze Prussian blue. Although he did not solve the problem of its constitution, he found that alum was not an essential constituent. These researches on arsenic and Prussian blue were praised by Macquer’s contemporaries, but it was through his books that he became widely known and influenced the development of chemistry.
The first textbook, Élément de chymie théorique, appeared in 1749, when there was a real need for an up-to-date book by a French author. Macquer wrote his Élémens for people with no previous chemical knowledge. He started with an account of the four elements, air, water, earth, and fire (of which phlogiston was a modification), briefly discussed affinity, and then considered compound substances in order of their increasing complexity, mineral, vegetable, and animal. He was careful not to mention any substance before acquainting the reader with it: for example, acids, alkalis, and salts were described before metals, so in the account of acids their power of dissolving metals was not mentioned. This “synthetic” treatment, as Macquer called it, seems to have been popular with beginners but was of little value in laboratory work, where an experimenter would normally be concerned with the analysis of naturally occurring substances that were compounds or mixtures. Macquer gave a thorough account of compound substances in Élémens de chymie pratique, which was no mere laboratory manual. The two books were complementary and were reprinted together in 1756, with slight modifications. There were no further editions in France’3 but the combined work enjoyed a great vogue in Britain, where Andrew Reid’s 1758 translation was reprinted as late as 1777-by which time it was badly out of date.
Textbooks are generally written by teachers, but Macquer’s teaching experience began only in 1752, when he was elected professor of pharmacy in the Pans Faculty of Medicine for a year. His partnership with Antoine Baume was more lasting. In 1757 they gave a joint course in chemistry that was attended by fifty or sixty people and proved to be the first of sixteen annual winter courses. The outline in their Plan d’um cows de chymie shows that they followed roughly the same order as in Macquer’s Eiemens, and they demonstrated 2,000 experiments. Their joint research included a study of one of the first specimens of platinum to reach France; they discovered no new chemical properties but showed that small portions could be melted with the aid of a powerful burning lens.
By 1773, when the joint courses ceased, Macquer had started lecturing at the Jardin du Roi. L. C. Bourdelin had been a professor of chemistry since 1743, but his health was poor and up to 1769 the lectures were often given by P. J. Malouin. Buffon, the intendant, then granted Macquer the reversion of the chair. He gave his first course in 1770 and, after Bourdelin’s death in 1777, became the titular professor and continued to lecture every summer until 1783. The professor’s lectures were always followed by experiments, performed and explained by the demonstrator. H. M. Rouelle had been demonstrator since 1768, and Macquer seems to have left him to plan the course, for the vegetable and animal kingdoms were treated before the mineral kingdom, as in Rouelle’s own private course. When A. L. Brongniart succeeded Rouelle, Macquer revised his course and from 1779 taught the mineral kingdom first, as in his Élémens and in a private course given by Brongniart. Macquer occasionally introduced new material into his lectures hut, surprisingly, said little about the chemistry of gases, explaining in an introductory lecture that he preferred not to deal with modern and controversial topics in a short course intended for beginners. His lectures were praised by Condorcet, who attended them, but his audiences were deprived of an up-to-date account of important new developments.
Macquer’s principal book, the Dictionnaire de сhimie, was one of a series that included J. C. Valmont de Bomare’s Dictionnaire raisonné universel cl’histoire naturally and an anonymous Dictionnaire portatif c'es arts et métiers compiled by Macquer’s brother Philippe. Like the latter, Macquer’s work also appeared anonymously, because Macquer had been commissioned to write it hastily and was worried about his reputation. Some articles to which he gave cross-references do not, in fact, appear, but he need not have worried, for the Dictionnoire was an immediate success. It was reprinted in 1766 and again in 1769, and Macquer soon started work on an enlarged and revised edition which was published in 1778.
A conscientious and respected member of the Academy of Sciences, Macquer served as its director in 1774. Although only briefly a practicing physician, he had become interested in the applications of chemistry to medicine, and in 1776 was a founding member of the Société Royal dc Médicine. He prepared many reports on memoirs and books submitted to these learned societies, and from 1750 examined books on chemistry, medicine, and natural history in his capacity as a royal censor.
Best known as the author of a widely read textbook and of the first chemical dictionary, Macquer made no lasting contributions to chemical theory and discovered few new substances. Nevertheless, he was an influential member of the Paris scientific community and did much important but unpublished research behind the scenes as a government scientific adviser.
Like most of his contemporaries, Macquer accepted the four-element theory of matter and expounded on it in his books and lectures, but he constantly tried to reconcile it with new discoveries. He followed Boerhaave in believing that earths such as lime and silica were modifications of the pure elementary earth which, he thought, must be a hard, transparent, crystalline substance. In 1766 he identified it with diamond; but in 1772, in collaboration with Lavoisier and others, he showed that diamond was combustible, and so by 1778 he had concluded that pure rock crystal was the element.
Upon his death, Macquer left a widow, whom he had married in 1748, and two daughters.
