Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
and mineralogist
Mineralogy
Mineralogy is the study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.-History:Early writing...
who was the first to arrange the chemical element
Chemical element
A chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. Familiar examples of elements include carbon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury, and lead.As of November 2011, 118 elements...
s in order of atomic weight
Atomic weight
Atomic weight is a dimensionless physical quantity, the ratio of the average mass of atoms of an element to 1/12 of the mass of an atom of carbon-12...
s, doing so in 1862. De Chancourtois only published his paper, but did not publish his actual graph with the proposed arrangement. Although his publication was significant, it was ignored by chemists as it was written in terms of geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
. It was Dmitri Mendeleyev's table published in 1869 that became most recognized. De Chancourtois was also a professor of mine surveying, and later geology at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris
The École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris was created in 1783 by King Louis XVI in order to train intelligent directors of mines. It is one of the most prominent French engineering schoolsThe École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (also known as Mines ParisTech, École des Mines de...
. He also was the Inspector of Mines in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and was widely responsible for implementing many mine safety regulations and laws during the time.
Life
De Chancourtois was born in 1820 in Paris. At age eighteen, he entered the renowned École PolytechniqueÉcole Polytechnique
The École Polytechnique is a state-run institution of higher education and research in Palaiseau, Essonne, France, near Paris. Polytechnique is renowned for its four year undergraduate/graduate Master's program...
, one of the best known French grandes écoles
Grandes écoles
The grandes écoles of France are higher education establishments outside the main framework of the French university system. The grandes écoles select students for admission based chiefly on national ranking in competitive written and oral exams...
of engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
and management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
. While he was there, de Chancourtois was a pupil of three famous French scientists, Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont
Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont
Jean-Baptiste Armand Louis Léonce Élie de Beaumont was a French geologist.-Biography:Élie de Beaumont was born at Canon, in Calvados...
, Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play
Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play
Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play , was a French engineer, sociologist, and economist.-Life:...
, and Ours-Pierre-Armand Petit-Dufrénoy
Ours-Pierre-Armand Petit-Dufrénoy
Ours-Pierre-Armand Petit-Dufrénoy was a French geologist and mineralogist.He was born at Sevran, in the département of Seine-et-Oise. After leaving the Imperial Lyceum in 1811, he studied until 1813 at the École Polytechnique, and then entered the Corps des Mines...
. After completing his studies at École Polytechnique, de Chancourtois went on a geological expedition into Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. In 1848, de Chancourtois went back to Paris and joined the teaching faculty as professor of mine surveying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris
École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris
The École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris was created in 1783 by King Louis XVI in order to train intelligent directors of mines. It is one of the most prominent French engineering schoolsThe École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (also known as Mines ParisTech, École des Mines de...
. He worked with le Play to organize a collection of minerals for the French government. In 1852, De Chancourtois was named the professor of geology at École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris. In 1867, de Chancourtois was awarded the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
by Napoleon III of France
Napoleon III of France
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...
. De Chancourtois led several overseas expeditions during the course of his life and served as the Inspector of Mines in Paris from 1875 until his death. As a mine inspector, he introduced safety laws to prevent methane gas explosions, which were frequent occurrences at the time. He died in 1886 in Paris.
Organizing the elements
John Alexander Reina Newlands
John Alexander Reina Newlands was an English chemist who invented the Periodic Table.Newlands was born in London and was the son of a scottish Presbyterian minister and his Italian wife....
published his classification of the elements, de Chancourtois created a fully functioning and unique system of organizing the chemical element
Chemical element
A chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. Familiar examples of elements include carbon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury, and lead.As of November 2011, 118 elements...
s. His proposed classification of elements was based on the newest values of atomic weights obtained by Stanislao Cannizzaro
Stanislao Cannizzaro
Stanislao Cannizzaro, FRS was an Italian chemist. He is remembered today largely for the Cannizzaro reaction and for his influential role in the atomic-weight deliberations of the Karlsruhe Congress in 1860.-Biography:...
in 1858. De Chancourtois devised a spiral graph that was arranged on a cylinder which he called vis tellurique, or telluric
Telluric
Telluric may refer to several things related to the Earth:*Telluric planet, an Earth-like planet primarily composed of silicate rocks*Telluric current, a natural electrical current in the Earth's crust...
helix because tellurium was the element in the middle of the graph. De Chancourtois ordered the elements by increasing atomic weight and with similar elements lined up vertically.
A.E.B. de Chancourtois plotted the atomic weights on the surface of a cylinder with a circumference of 16 units, the approximate atomic weight of oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...
. The resulting helical curve, which de Chancourtois called a square cirlcl triangle, brought similar elements onto corresponding points above or below one another on the cylinder. Thus, he suggested that "the properties of the elements are the properties of numbers." He was the first scientist to see the periodicity
Periodic table
The periodic table of the chemical elements is a tabular display of the 118 known chemical elements organized by selected properties of their atomic structures. Elements are presented by increasing atomic number, the number of protons in an atom's atomic nucleus...
of elements when they were arranged in order of their atomic weights. He saw that the similar elements occurred at regular atomic weight intervals. Despite de Chancourtois' work, his publication attracted little attention from chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
s around the world. He presented the paper to the French Academy of Sciences
French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
which published it in Comptes Rendus, the academy's journal. De Chancourtois's original diagram was left out of the publication, making the paper hard to comprehend. However, the diagram did appear in a less widely read geological pamphlet. The paper also dealt mainly with geological concepts, and did not suit the interests of many chemistry experts. It was not until 1869 that Dmitri Mendeleyev's periodic table
Periodic table
The periodic table of the chemical elements is a tabular display of the 118 known chemical elements organized by selected properties of their atomic structures. Elements are presented by increasing atomic number, the number of protons in an atom's atomic nucleus...
attracted attention and gained widespread scientific acceptance. He always managed to put the names of his four children into his work by writing their names on a corner of his work. Landon, Lynelle, Steve and Berdine were on all his work.