Hippolyte-Victor Collet-Descotils (21 November 1773 in

Caen Caen (; ; ) is a Communes of France, commune inland from the northwestern coast of France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Calvados (department), Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inha ...

– 6 December 1815 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 ...

) was a French chemist. He studied in the

École des Mines de Paris École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

, and was a student and friend of

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

. He is best known for confirming the discovery of

chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

by Vauquelin, and for independently discovering

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

in 1803. In 1806, Collet-Descotils misidentified erythronium, a new element discovered in Mexico by

Andrés Manuel del Río Andrés Manuel del Río y Fernández (10 November 1764 – 23 March 1849) was a Spanish scientist, natural history, naturalist and engineer who discovered compounds of ''vanadium'' in 1801. He proposed that the element be given the name ''panchr ...

, thinking that it was chromium. This resulted in

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

rejecting Del Río's discovery. The same element was rediscovered thirty years later in Sweden and renamed as

vanadium Vanadium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an ...

. In 1815, a few months before his death, he got the position of director of

, in charge of transferring the school to a new building. He is buried in the 10th Division of the

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (, , formerly , ) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France, at . With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Buried at Père Lachaise are many famous figures in the ...

of Paris.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collet-Descotils, Hippolyte-Victor 1773 births 1815 deaths Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Scientists from Caen 19th-century French chemists