Jean Stas

Infobox Scientist
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birth_date = August 21, 1813
birth_place = Leuven
death_date = December 13, 1891
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nationality = Belgian
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field = chemist
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influences = Jean-Baptiste Dumas
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Jean Servais Stas (August 21, 1813 - December 13, 1891) was a Belgian analytical chemist.

Stas was born in Leuven and trained initially as a physician. He later switched to chemistry and worked at the École Polytechnique in Paris under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Dumas. Stas and Dumas established the atomic weight of carbon by weighing a sample of the pure material, burning it in pure oxygen, and then weighing the carbon dioxide produced.

In 1840, Stas was appointed professor at the Royal Military School in Brussels. He acquired international fame by establishing the atomic weights of the elements more accurately than had ever been done before, using oxygen = 16 as a standard. His results disproved the hypothesis of the English physicist William Prout that all atomic weights must be integral multiples of that of hydrogen. These careful, accurate atomic weight measurements of Stas helped lay the foundation for the periodic system of elements of Dmitri Mendeleev and others.

Stas retired in 1869 because of problems with his voice caused by a throat ailment. He became commissioner of the mint, but resigned in 1872 because he disagreed with the government's monetary policy. Jean Stas died in Brussels and was buried at Leuven.

Bibliography

* Œuvres complètes (3 dln., uitg. d. L.W. Spring en J.B. Depaire, 1894).

Further reading

*- translated into English by Ralph Oesper