Antoine Alexandre Brutus Bussy (29 May 1794 – 1 February 1882) was a French

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...

who primarily studied pharmaceuticals.

Education

Antoine Bussy entered the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

in 1813, and there followed the courses delivered by Pierre Robiquet, the great French chemist who was to make decisive breakthroughs in bio-chemistry (he isolated the first amino-acid ever identified, asparagin, in 1805–1806), in industrial dyes (he isolated and identified

alizarin Alizarin (also known as 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone, Mordant Red 11, C.I. 58000, and Turkey Red) is an organic compound with formula that has been used throughout history as a prominent red dye, principally for dyeing textile fabrics. Historic ...

, the most famous and first modern industrial red dye) and the pick-up of modern medication (he isolated, identified and started mass production of codeine, 1832). Robiquet tutored Antoine Bussy in his career as a chemist researcher and in his private career as pharmacist as well. In 1831 Antoine Bussy published the 'Mémoire sur le Radical métallique de la Magnésie' where he described a method of preparing

magnesium Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic ta ...

by heating

magnesium chloride Magnesium chloride is the family of inorganic compounds with the formula , where x can range from 0 to 12. These salts are colorless or white solids that are highly soluble in water. These compounds and their solutions, both of which occur in natu ...

and

potassium Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin ''kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosph ...

in a glass tube. When the potassium chloride was washed out, small globules of magnesium remained.

References

19th-century French chemists 1794 births 1882 deaths École Polytechnique alumni Members of the French Academy of Sciences {{france-chemist-stub