Stas, Jean-Servais

Together with the Belgian Jean-Servais Stas (1813-1891) and one or two other Europeans, Jean Charles Gallisard de Marignac (1817-1894) was the major... 

However, the coffin of Prout s hypothesis was nailed shut around 1865 by the careful analytical studies of Jean Servais Stas. Figure 308 depicts a magnificent apparatus for total analysis of silver iodate (Agl03). How could one possibly argue with a Rube Goldberg-looking apparatus like that The gasometer... 

In the 1860s, for instance, the Belgian chemist Jean Servais Stas (1813-91) determined atomic weights more accurately than Berzelius had done. Then, at the begiiming of the twentieth century, the American chemist Theodore William Richards (1868-1928), taking fantastic precautions, produced atomic weight values that may represent the ultimate accuracy possible to purely chemical methods. 

The person who did the most to refute Prout s hypothesis was the Belgian Jean Servais Stas, who began his researches into atomic weight determination in 1841 by writing, I will say it loudly. When I undertook my researches I had an almost absolute faith in the correctness of Prout s hypothesis. ... 

With such views being expressed, it was not surprising that there was a revival of interest in Prout s hypothesis, and Dumas proposed that all atomic weights were multiples of 0.25. Just as the careful work of Berzelius had disposed of the notion that atomic weights were multiples of the value for hydrogen, it was the elegant determinations of Jean Servais Stas (1813-1891) that demonstrated that atomic weight values were not exact multiples of 0.25. 

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