Glauber Chemist

Henri-Louis du Hamel (or Duhamel) du Monceau, 1700—1782. French chemist and agriculturist who proved in 1736 that the mineral alkali (soda) is a constituent of common salt, of Glauber s salt, and of borax With his brother, M. de Denarn-villiers, he carried out important experiments in plant nutrition on their estate... 

German chemist who detected sodium sulfate (Glauber s salt, the enixum of Paracelsus) in water from a spring near Vienna and introduced its use into medicine. His Description of New Philosophical Furnaces contains methods for the preparation of pyroligneous acid and the mineral acids. 

Though Glauber s writings on chemical philosophy followed the obscure, medieval transcendentalism of previous centuries, and though he elaborately advertised the remedies he dispensed, nevertheless, as a practical chemist, and as a careful and reliable recorder of the results of the experiments of himself and others, Glauber set a new landmark in technical chemistry, and insured for himself a deserved place in the history of the arts of chemistry. 

Glauber was the first to separate sulphur from the acid, by heating its salts with coal and acidifying the aqueous extract of the product. On account of this relation between sulphur and the acid, the French chemists de Morveau, Lavoisier, Berthollet and Fourcroy proposed the name sulphuric acid, 6 which has been retained. 

Clericuzio, From van Helmont to Boyle, 304. Du Clos s student Lefebvre cited van Helmont and Glauber as the two greatest chemists of his time (Lefebvre, A Compleat Body of Chymistry, To the apothecaries of England ). 

Ammonium nitrate (uh-MOH-ni-um NYE-trate) is a white crystalline substance first made artificially in 1659 by the German chemist Johann Rudolf Glauber (1604-1670). The compound does not occur in nature because it is so soluble that it is washed out of the soil by rain and surface water. Ammonium nitrate is stable at lower temperatures, but tends to decompose explosively when heated to temperatures above 2oo°C (390°F). Its two most important uses today are in fertilizers and explosives. In 2004, it ranked fourteenth among all chemicals manufactured in the United States. Just over six million metric tons (6.6 million short tons) of the compound were produced in 2004. 

Potassium sulfate (poe-TAS-ee-yum SUL-fate) is also known as potash of sulfur, sulfuric acid dipotassium salt, arcanum duplicatum, and sal polychrestum. It is a colorless or white granular, crystalline, or powdery solid with a hitter, salty taste. It occurs in nature as the mineral arcanite and in the mineral langheinite (K2Mg2(S04)3). The compound was known to alchemists as early as the fourteenth century, and was analyzed hy a number of early chemists, including Johann Glauber (1604-1670), Robert Boyle (1627-1691), and Otto Tachenius (c. 1620-1690). 

German chemist Johann Rudolf Glauber is believed to have been the first to produce hydrogen chloride in a reasonably pure form. Later he is first to make ammonium nitrate artificially. 

Still later came a German chemist, Johann Rudolf Glauber (1604-68), who discovered a method of forming hydrochloric acid by the action of sulfuric acid on ordinary salt. In the process he obtained a residue, sodium sulfate, which we stiU call Glauber s salt even today. 

In the seventeenth century the German-Dutch chemist Johann Glauber prepared sulfuric acid by burning sulfur together with saltpeter (potassium nitrate, KNO3) in the presence of steam. As the saltpeter decomposes, it oxidizes the sulfur to SO3, which combines with water to produce sulfuric acid. In 1736, Joshua Ward, a London pharmacist, used this method to begin the first large-scale production of sulfuric acid. 

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