Profession: chemist

Vicq d’Azyr, hugely impressed, encouraged him in his studies. Buffon supported his appointment to a Chair in chemistry. Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Berthollet and Guyton de Morveau together devised a consistent nomenclature for chemistry which still underlies the modern version. Vauquelin and he taught Thénard and helped him get a position at the École Polytechnique. Gay-Lussac became his demonstrator before succeeding him as professor.

Berzelius regarded himself as his correspondent Dalton’s disciple. He wrote to Berthollet about the presence of fluoride in water, visited Gay-Lussac in Paris, and contributed to Nicholson’s scientific journal. A prolific correspondent, Humboldt, Davy (a rival), Faraday, Turner and Mulder were among other scientist contacts; Mitscherlich and Wöhler (in search of the best-possible chemical education) had both studied in his laboratory. Andersen (with an introduction from Ørsted) visited him in Uppsala, and got a warm reception. Liebig became increasingly irritated at the failure of his ‘fatherly friend’ to publicly pass on his mantle.

Pelouze worked as laboratory assistant for Gay-Lussac, collaborated with Liebig in Germany, and was also a colleague of Bunsen’s. Berzelius was a good friend. Nobel, one of Pelouze’s students, took nitroglycerine (the disconcerting discovery of another of Pelouze’s students, Ascanio Sobrero) and developed and exploited it as a powerful yet safe explosive. Pelouze helped set up his friend Bernard’s marriage, and gave him curare-tipped arrows so he could experiment with the poison’s operation.

As a young man, Bunsen met with Liebig, joined Mitscherlich on an expedition through the Eifel, and visited Runge in Berlin and Gay-Lussac in Paris. He collaborated with Roscoe for ten years, but broke off to work with the young Kirchhoff on spectroscopy (the bunsen burner was a by-product of this research). Playfair was a close colleague in Marburg then Scotland. Bunsen worked alongside Helmholtz and Kirchhoff (as did Roscoe, a friend for life) at the University of Heidelberg, making it a scientific mecca. Frankland, Tyndall, Mendeleev, Meyer, Auer von Welsbach and Kamerlingh Onnes (who discovered superconductivity) were among his students.