Louis Nicolas Vauquelin

Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (16 May 1763 - 14 November 1829), was a French pharmacist and chemist. Vauquelin was born at Saint-André-d'Hébertot in Normandy, France. His first acquaintance with chemistry was gained as laboratory assistant to an apothecary in Rouen (1777-1779), and after various vicissitudes he obtained an introduction to A.F. Fourcroy, in whose laboratory he was an assistant from 1783 to 1791. Moving to Paris, he became a laboratory a... more

Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (16 May 1763 - 14 November 1829), was a French pharmacist and chemist. Vauquelin was born at Saint-André-d'Hébertot in Normandy, France. His first acquaintance with chemistry was gained as laboratory assistant to an apothecary in Rouen (1777-1779), and after various vicissitudes he obtained an introduction to A.F. Fourcroy, in whose laboratory he was an assistant from 1783 to 1791. Moving to Paris, he became a laboratory assistant at the Jardin du Roi and was befriended by a professor of chemistry. In 1791 he was made a member of the Academy of Sciences and from that time he helped to edit the journal Annales de Chimie (Chemical annals), although he left the country for a while during the height of the French Revolution. In 1798 Vauquelin discovered beryllium by extracting it from an emerald (a beryl variety) and reducing the beryllium chloride with potassium in a platinum crucible. At first his work appeared as that of his master and patron, then in their... less