Émile Bourquelot (21 June 1851 – 26 January 1921) was a French chemist, and professor of

pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...

at the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

. He was born in Jandun (

Ardennes The Ardennes ( ; ; ; ; ), also known as the Ardennes Forest or Forest of Ardennes, is a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, extending into Germany and France. Geological ...

, France), to a farmer, and was the eldest of three sons. Bourquelot became the Chief Pharmacist at the Laënnec Hospital in 1887, where he established a laboratory to conduct his research into

carbohydrate chemistry A carbohydrate () is a biomolecule composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O) atoms. The typical hydrogen-to-oxygen atomic ratio is 2:1, analogous to that of water, and is represented by the empirical formula (where ''m'' and ''n'' ma ...

. Bourquelot and other French pharmacists pioneered the study of plant

glycoside In chemistry, a glycoside is a molecule in which a sugar is bound to another functional group via a glycosidic bond. Glycosides play numerous important roles in living organisms. Many plants store chemicals in the form of inactive glycosides. ...

s, molecules in which a sugar is bound to a non-carbohydrate part. They developed methods to stabilize these compounds in solution, and detect them enzymatically. He died at the age of 70 on 26 January 1921 of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

. The

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 method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

awarded him the ''Prix Montagne'' for 1897.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bourquelot, Emile 20th-century French chemists 1851 births 1921 deaths Academic staff of the University of Paris 19th-century French chemists