Jules Henri Debray (26 July 1827, in

Amiens Amiens (English: or ; ; pcd, Anmien, or ) is a city and commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in the region of Hauts-de-France. In 2021, the population of ...

– 19 July 1888, 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 ...

. In 1847 he began his studies at the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education Secondary education or post-primary education covers two phases on the International Standard Classification of Education sca ...

in Paris, and several years later became an instructor at the

Lycée Charlemagne The Lycée Charlemagne is located in the Marais quarter of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, the capital city of France. Constructed many centuries before it became a lycée, the building originally served as the home of the Order of the Jesu ...

(1855). From 1875 onward, he taught classes in chemistry at the École Normale Supérieure, where in 1881 he succeeded

Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville (11 March 18181 July 1881) was a French chemist. He was born in the island of St Thomas in the Danish West Indies, where his father was French consul. Together with his elder brother Charles he was educated ...

as professor of chemistry.A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals
by Donald McDonald, Leslie B. HuntNature, Volume 38
edited by Sir Norman Lockyer He is best remembered for his collaborative research with Sainte-Claire Deville involving the properties of

platinum metals The platinum-group metals (abbreviated as the PGMs; alternatively, the platinoids, platinides, platidises, platinum group, platinum metals, platinum family or platinum-group elements (PGEs)) are six noble, precious metallic elements clustered to ...

, in particular, the melting of

platinum Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Pla ...

and its alloys. Their process for melting platinum remained the chosen method until

induction furnace An induction furnace is an electrical furnace in which the heat is applied by induction heating of metal. Induction furnace capacities range from less than one kilogram to one hundred tons, and are used to melt iron and steel, copper, aluminu ...

s became available decades later. In 1860, the two scientists were the first to melt an appreciable quantity of

iridium Iridium is a chemical element with the symbol Ir and atomic number 77. A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, it is considered the second-densest naturally occurring metal (after osmium) with a density of ...

. During his career, Debray served as an assayer for the Bureau de Garantie of Paris, was vice-president of the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale and was a member of the

Académie des sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des 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. It was at the ...

Published works

* ''Glucium et des ses composés'', 1855 –

Beryllium Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form m ...

and its compounds. * ''De la métallurgie du platine et des métaux qui'' (with Sainte-Claire Deville), 1861 – On the

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sci ...

of platinum and associated metals. * ''Cours élémentaire de chimie''; third edition, revised and augmented, Paris: Dunod, 1870–1876. Elementary courses on chemistry. * ''Sur la production des températures élevées et sur la fusion du platine'' – On producing high temperatures and the melting of platinum. * ''Sur une propriété nouvelle du rhodium métallique''. Paris, Acad.Sci. Compt. Rend., 78, 1874 with (Sainte-Claire Deville). – On a new property of metallic

rhodium Rhodium is a chemical element with the symbol Rh and atomic number 45. It is a very rare, silvery-white, hard, corrosion-resistant transition metal. It is a noble metal and a member of the platinum group. It has only one naturally occurring ...

. * ''Sur les combinaisons de l'acide arsénique et de l'acide molybdique''. Paris, Acad. Sei. Compt. Rend., 78, 1874, pp. 1408–1411 – On the combinations of

arsenic acid Arsenic acid or trihydrogen arsenate is the chemical compound with the formula . More descriptively written as , this colorless acid is the arsenic analogue of phosphoric acid. Arsenate and phosphate salts behave very similarly. Arsenic acid as ...

and

molybdic acid Molybdic acid refers to hydrated forms of molybdenum trioxide and related species. The monohydrate (MoO3·H2O) and the dihydrate (MoO3·2H2O) are well characterized. They are yellow diamagnetic solids. Structure of the solids Solid forms of m ...

.Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des ..., Volume 78
by Académie des sciences (France)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Debray, Jules Henri 1827 births 1888 deaths École Normale Supérieure alumni Academic staff of the École Normale Supérieure Members of the French Academy of Sciences 19th-century French chemists French metallurgists People from Amiens