Bertholet, Marcellin

In later years, Gay-Lussac continued to advance science. He developed a precise method for analyzing the alcoholic content of liquors and patented a method for the manufacture of sulfuric acid. His last publication on aqua regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids that dissolves gold or platinum) came out the year before his death in 1850. Gay-Lussac was a top-notch experimentalist and theoretician. More than twenty-five years after Gay-Lussac died, the prominent chemist Marcellin Bertholet (1827-1907) once said, We all teach. . . the chemistry of Lavoisier and Gay-Lussac (Crosland, p. 248), a fitting tribute to two outstanding scientists of the era. see also Acid-Base Chemistry Berthollet, Claude-Louis Charles, Jacques Dalton, John Davy, Humphry Lavoisier, Antoine. 

Errors in scientific papers are not uncommon even though co-authors, colleagues, and reviewers screen many papers. It is not uncommon to spot minor errors by authors upon the first look at a paper as it appears in press. Referees tend to focus attention to major aspects of scientific papers, often from very personal points of view, which often results in nonconstructive comments that have little value to authors, particularly in preventing future mistakes. A good illustration of such a lofty report is that of a well-known German chemist, Hermann Kolbe (1918— 1984), on a paper by equally distinguished French chemist, Marcellin Bertholet (1827—1907) ... 

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