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50

La Lettre

© Archives de l'Académie des sciences

Marcelin Berthelot (1827-1907)

© Pictorial Press Ltd - Alamy

© Bruno Villoutreix - Inserm

The synthesis of dyes launched the chemical

industry era: here is mauveine, the first

synthetic dye to be made (Perkin, 1856).

William Henry Perkin

(1838-1907)

later discovered! The periodic table

was probably one of the greatest

scientific discoveries ever: it showed

that no more than some tens of atoms

constitute all matter in the universe.

Incidentally, the very existence

of atoms was not yet universally

accepted: some chemists, such as

Marcelin Berthelot, violently opposed

the atomic theory!

With analysis, chemists finally

understood what matter was made of. In return, they could combine the elements in order to develop

the most creative part of chemistry, synthesis. Chemists were becoming able not only to understand

nature, but also to create new molecules. The synthesis of urea by Wohler, then that of acetylene by

Berthelot, showed that it was possible to synthesize an organic compound without resorting to the "vital

force". Marcelin Berthelot's work,

Organic Chemistry based on Synthesis

, published in 1860, triumphantly

opened the pathway for organic chemistry.

Chemistry was a science but it was also an industry, which, relying on the

new syntheses performed in the laboratory, would be a great contribution

to the industrial revolution

of the 19th Century.

The synthesis of dyes

– mauveine by Perkin,

indigo by Baeyer, the 1905

Nobel Prize – enabled the

organic industry to rise

and companies such as

BASF to be created, in

1865.

At the same time, inorga-

nic chemistry was develo-

ping the manufacture of

soda using the Leblanc

process, replaced 50

years afterwards by the

Solvay process. Technically ambitious and clever, the implementation of these processes is a model of

what the chemical industry has been able to achieve.