Fresenius, Carl

Fresenius, Carl Remigius (1818-1897) German chemist in Wiesbaden, known for his studies in analytical chemistry. 

The first works dedicated to chemical analysis were very important to the development of analytical chemistry as a science. Books by Carl Remigus Fresenius, Anleitung zur qualitativen chemischen Analise (1841) by Gaston Chariot, Theorie et methode nouvelle d analise qualitative (1942) and by F. Feigel, "Chemistry of Specific, Selective and Sensitive Reactions (1949), should be mentioned in appreciation of their foundational work. 

Analytical chemistry began in the late eighteenth century with the work of French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and others the discipline was further developed in the nineteenth century by Carl Fresenius and Karl Friedrich Mohr. As a pharmacist s apprentice in Frankfurt, Germany, Fresenius developed an extensive qualitative analysis scheme that, when it was later published, served as the first textbook of analytical chemistry. He built a laboratory at his house that opened in 1848. Here he trained students in gravimetric techniques that he had developed. Mohr developed laboratory devices such as the pinch clamp burette and the volumetric pipette. He also devised a colorimetric endpoint for silver titrations. It was his 1855 book on titrimetry, Lehrhuch der Chemisch-Analytischen Titromethode, that generated widespread interest in the technique. 

Carl Remigius Fresenius (Frankfurt, 28 December 1818-Wiesbaden, ii June 1897), assistant to Liebig at Giessen, established (1848) an analytical teaching laboratory in Wiesbaden and was professor in the Agricultural Institute there (1845-76). Fresenius wrote books on qualitative and quantitative analysis which went through numerous editions and translations. ... 

The next author of note was Heinrich Rose (1795-1864). He published his book in 1829 and it contained for the first time a systematic scheme of qualitative analysis. An improved procedure was published in 1841 in the analytical textbook of Carl Remigius Fresenius (1818-1897). He divided the metals into six analytical groups, and his scheme remains the basis of classical qualitative analysis. Fresenius s book was very successful by the time of his death it had run to 16 editions and had been translated into many languages. In 1862 Fresenius founded the Zeitschrift fur analytische Chemie, which was the first chemical journal to specialise in one branch of the subject. 

Joseph Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) seems to have been the first chemist to give the status of exact quantitative analysis method to titrimetry after his work in 1824 devoted to the determination of active chlorine, potassium hydroxide, and silver ion. Other chemists in this field must also be mentioned. We shall be content here with recalling Karl Friedrich Mohr (1800-1879) and Carl Remigius Fresenius (1818-1897). 

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