Raoul-Pierre Pictet (4 April 1846 – 27 July 1929) was a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

. Pictet is co-credited with French scientist Louis-Paul Cailletet as the first to produce liquid

oxygen Oxygen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group (periodic table), group in the periodic table, a highly reactivity (chemistry), reactive nonmetal (chemistry), non ...

in 1877.

Biography

Pictet was born in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

. He served as

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

in the university of that city. He devoted himself largely to problems involving the production of low temperatures and the liquefaction and solidification of gases.For biographical details, see On December 22, 1877, the Academy of Sciences in

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 ...

received a telegram from Pictet in Geneva reading as follows: ''Oxygen liquefied to-day under 320 atmospheres and 140 degrees of cold by combined use of sulfurous and carbonic acid.'' This announcement was almost simultaneous with that of Cailletet who had liquefied oxygen by a completely different process. Pictet died in Paris in 1929.

Works

* * * ''Nouvelles machines frigorifiques basées sur l'emploi de phénomènes physicochimiques'' (1895) * ''Étude critique du matérialisme et du spiritualisme par la physique expérimentale'' (1896) * ''L'acétylène'' (1896) * ''Le carbide'' (1896) * ''Zur mechanischen Theorie der Explosivstoffe'' (1902) * ''Die Theorie der Apparate zur Herstellung flüssiger Luft mit Entspannung'' (1903) *

References

1846 births 1929 deaths Scientists from Geneva Swiss physicists Swiss non-fiction writers Swiss male non-fiction writers Raoul {{physicist-stub

Biography

Works

See also

References