André Laugier (1 August 1770, in

Lisieux Lisieux () is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. It is the capital of the Pays d'Auge area, which is characterised by valleys and hedged farmland. Name The name of the town derives from the ...

– 19 April 1832, in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

) 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 ...

pharmacist A pharmacist, also known as a chemist (Commonwealth English) or a druggist (North American and, archaically, Commonwealth English), is a healthcare professional who prepares, controls and distributes medicines and provides advice and instructi ...

and

mineralogist Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the proces ...

. He was a cousin to famed chemist

Antoine François Fourcroy Antoine is a French given name (from the Latin ''Antonius'' meaning 'highly praise-worthy') that is a variant of Danton, Titouan, D'Anton and Antonin. The name is used in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, West Greenland, Haiti, French Guian ...

and the father of astronomer Paul Auguste Ernest Laugier (1812–1872). He received his education in his hometown of

, and during the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...

, was tasked with collecting church bells in Bretagne in order for them to be melted down for the production of cannons.Google Books
Johnson's New Universal Cyclopædia : a Scientific and Popular ..., Volume 2 In 1794 he was employed as head of the

gunpowder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, carbon (in the form of charcoal) and potassium nitrate ( saltpeter) ...

and

saltpeter Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . This alkali metal nitrate salt is also known as Indian saltpetre (large deposits of which were historically mined in India). It is an ionic salt of potassium ions K+ and nit ...

works at the

Comite de salut public The Committee of Public Safety (french: link=no, Comité de salut public) was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution ...

. In 1797 he received his master's degree in pharmacy, and subsequently taught classes in chemistry and pharmacy at the military training schools in

Toulon Toulon (, , ; oc, label=Provençal, Tolon , , ) is a city on the French Riviera and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, and the Provence province, Toulon is the ...

and

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the Nord ...

.Société d'Histoire de la Pharmacie
biographical information
biographical sketch In 1803, with assistance from Fourcroy, he became an assistant naturalist at the

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the ' (abbreviation MNHN), is the national natural history museum of France and a ' of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum, with four galleries, is loca ...

, where, following the death of Fourcroy in December 1809, he was appointed as his replacement as professor of chemistry. In 1829 he succeeded

Louis Nicolas Vauquelin Prof. Louis Nicolas Vauquelin FRS(For) HFRSE (16 May 1763 – 14 November 1829) was a French pharmacist and chemist. He was the discoverer of both chromium and beryllium. Early life Vauquelin was born at Saint-André-d'Hébertot in Normandy, Fr ...

as director of the École de pharmacie in Paris. Laugier died of cholera in Paris on 19 April 1832.Biographie normande: recueil de notices biographiques et ..., Volume 2
by

Théodore-Éloi Lebreton Théodore-Éloi Lebreton (1 December 1803 – 12 December 1883) was a 19th-century autodidact French poet, chansonnier and bibliographer. Biography Born from a day laborer and a washerwoman, Lebreton entered at age seven in an indienne factory ...

He was the author of many scientific notes on minerals,

meteorite A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object en ...

s and

meteoric iron Meteoric iron, sometimes meteoritic iron, is a native metal and early-universe protoplanetary-disk remnant found in meteorites and made from the elements iron and nickel, mainly in the form of the mineral phases kamacite and taenite. Meteoric i ...

s, and is credited with providing practical methods for separation of

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, ...

and

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow ...

; iron and

titanium Titanium is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resista ...

;

cerium Cerium is a chemical element with the symbol Ce and atomic number 58. Cerium is a soft, ductile, and silvery-white metal that tarnishes when exposed to air. Cerium is the second element in the lanthanide series, and while it often shows the +3 o ...

and iron. His chemical findings were recorded mainly in the ''Annales du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle''. In 1829 he published the four volume ''Cours de Chimie générale''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Laugier, Andre 1770 births 1832 deaths People from Lisieux Deaths from cholera 19th-century French chemists French mineralogists French pharmacists 18th-century French chemists