Louis Joseph Troost (17 October 1825,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

– 30 September 1911) was a French

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...

Biography

In 1848, he began his studies at the

École Normale Supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...

in Paris, where from 1851 he worked as an assistant chemist. In 1856, he received his doctorate of sciences. After serving as chair of chemistry at the

Lycée Bonaparte Lycée Bonaparte is a French international school in Doha, Qatar. It includes levels ''maternelle'' (preschool) through ''lycée'' (senior high school). It is named after French Emperor Napoleon. The École Française de Doha was established in ...

, he became a lecturer at the École Normale Supérieure (from 1868). Beginning in 1874, he was a professor of chemistry to the faculty of sciences in Paris, and in 1884, replaced

Charles Adolphe Wurtz Charles Adolphe Wurtz (; 26 November 181710 May 1884) was an Alsatian French chemist. He is best remembered for his decades-long advocacy for the atomic theory and for ideas about the structures of chemical compounds, against the skeptical opinio ...

as a member of the

Académie des 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 ...

.Nature, Volume 87
edited by Sir Norman Lockyer With

Henri Sainte-Claire Deville Henri is the French form of the masculine given name Henry, also in Estonian, Finnish, German and Luxembourgish. Bearers of the given name include: People French nobles * Henri I de Montmorency (1534–1614), Marshal and Constable of France * ...

, he worked on determining vapor densities at high temperatures and conducted studies on the

porosity Porosity or void fraction is a measure of the void (i.e. "empty") spaces in a material, and is a fraction of the volume of voids over the total volume, between 0 and 1, or as a percentage between 0% and 100%. Strictly speaking, some tests measure ...

of metals at high temperatures. Also with Deville, he helped advance the concept of " chemical dissociation". In addition, he performed significant studies of

lithium salts Lithium (from , , ) is a chemical element; it has symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, ...

, and with Paul Hautefeuille, he conducted research on the

solubility In chemistry, solubility is the ability of a chemical substance, substance, the solute, to form a solution (chemistry), solution with another substance, the solvent. Insolubility is the opposite property, the inability of the solute to form su ...

of gases in metals.

Selected works

Troost was the author of ''Traité élémentaire de chimie'' (1847; 24th edition, 1948) that became a standard textbook for successive generations of students. His other noted works are: * ''Recherches sur le lithium et ses composés'', 1857. * ''Precis de chimie'', third edition, 1870.WorldCat Identities
Most widely held works by Louis Joseph Troost

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Troost, Louis Joseph 1825 births 1911 deaths Members of the French Academy of Sciences Academic staff of the University of Paris 19th-century French chemists Scientists from Paris