Prevost, Charles

Albert Kirrmann and Charles Prevost Charles Prevost Arthur Lap worth... 

Prevost, Charles. "La transposition allylique et les derives d addition des carbures erythreniques." Annales de Chimie 10(1928) 113146, 147181,356439. 

Prevost, Charles, and Albert Kirrmann. "Essai d une theorie ionique des reactions organiques. Premier memoire." Bull.SCF 49 (1931) 194243. 

The Paris school included Robert Lespieau (18641947), Georges Dupont (18841958), Charles Prevost (18991983), and Albert Kirrmann (19001974). Principal figures in the London-Manchester school were Arthur Lapworth (18721941), Thomas Martin Lowry (18741936), Robert Robinson (18861975), Jocelyn Thorpe (18721940), and Christopher Ingold (18931970). A broadly defined German research school pursuing ionic and electronic theories of reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry does not enter into this history, because it did not exist. 

Pierre Piganiol, "Charles Prevost," Ann.AEENS( 9S5). Courtesy of ENS Bibliotheque des Lettres. 

Charles Prevost (18991983), the son of a Parisian engineer, recalled the origins of his career in chemistry. As a lycee student, he had taken the baccalaureate examinations in both mathematics and philosophy. There followed the "special mathematics" class at the Lycee Louis le Grand which prepared students for the entry exams for the Ecole Normale and Ecole Polytechnique. "Like most of the students leaving the classes de speciales, I thought myself to have a vocation as a mathematician. "52 But the lectures of the physicist... 

See Charles Prevost, "Notice necrologique. Albert Kirrmann," Bull.SCF (1957), ler partie, 14511454. Charpentier-Morize has characterized Kirrmann as a Protestant of moral rigor and Prevost as a traditionalist Catholic. In private correspondence, 16 January 1991. 

Charles Prevost, Notice sur les titres et travaux scientifiques (Paris Societe d Edition d Enseignement Suprieure, 1967) 7. 

The dominant tendency of my studies has been not so much to obtain and describe organic compounds but... to penetrate their mechanisms.. . . For undertaking this kind of problem, the classic methods of organic chemistry are far from sufficient. Physicochemical procedures become more and more necessary. I have been led to use especially optical methods (the Raman effect and ultraviolet spectra) and electrochemical techniques (conductibility, electrode potentials, and especially polarography).. . . The notion of reaction mechanism led almost automatically to envisioning the electronic aspect of chemical phenomena. From 1927, and working in common with Charles Prevost, I have directed my attention on the electronic theory of reactions." 56... 

Albert Kirrmann and Charles Prevost at center of group of colleagues in 1950. Courtesy of Mme. Noemi Guem-Prevost. 

P. Piganiol, [ Obituary notice Charles Prevost ], Ann. Anc. Eleves Ecole Norm. Sup., 1985, 46. 

It is certainly not by chance that Barriol s first research, in collaboration with Pierre Donzelot, dealt with the Raman effect. Lespieau had been one of the first who had studied, often with Maurice Bourguel, the Raman effect, [9] in relation to chemical constitution. [10] Donzelot did some research on the same subject with Charles Prevost, another student of Lespieau, when Prevost was a professor of chemistry at the Nancy Faculte de Pharmacie. At the very same time Barriol also was around. A note to the Academic, des Sciences, concerning the relation between Raman frequencies and interatomic distances, by Donzelot and Barriol, was presented by Lespieau and concluded It seems that the interatomic distance constitutes an essential characteristic of a molecule, around which one can group the properties, not only those related to the Raman effect, but also manyfold physical characteristics. [11]... 

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