Louis Nicolas Vauquelin

Louis Nicolas Vauquelin (16 May 1763 – 14 November 1829), was a French pharmacist and chemist.

Early life

Vauquelin was born at Saint-André-d'Hébertot in Normandy, France. His first acquaintance with chemistry was gained as laboratory assistant to an apothecary in Rouen (1777–1779), and after various vicissitudes he obtained an introduction to A.F. Fourcroy, in whose laboratory he was an assistant from 1783 to 1791.

Moving to Paris, he became a laboratory assistant at the Jardin du Roi and was befriended by a professor of chemistry. In 1791 he was made a member of the Academy of Sciences and from that time he helped to edit the journal Annales de Chimie (Chemical annals), although he left the country for a while during the height of the French Revolution. In 1798 Vauquelin discovered beryllium by extracting it from an emerald (a beryl variety).

Contributions to chemistry

At first his work appeared as that of his master and patron, then in their joint names; in 1790 he began to publish on his own, and between that year and 1833 his name is associated with 376 papers. Most of these were simple records of patient and laborious analytical operations, and it is perhaps surprising that among all the substances he analysed he only detected two new elements, beryllium in 1798 in beryl and chromium in 1797 in a red lead ore from Siberia. He also managed to get liquid ammonia at atmospheric pressure.

Louis Nicolas

Louis Nicolas (1634-1682?) was a French missionary in Canada in the late 17th and early 18th century. Born in France, at age of about 30 this Jesuit priest arrived in New France in 1664 and stayed for eleven years. He was fascinated by the wildlife and Native peoples of the New World, and is believed to have been the author of the hand-drawn book known as the Codex canadiensis, which documents these subjects. Louis Nicolas is the confirmed author of the books Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales and the Grammaire algonquine. He returned to France in 1675 and historians believe that he died in 1682.

Louis Nicolas was born on August 15, 1634 in Aubenas, Vivarais, a commune in the Ardèche region of France. At the age of twenty, he joined the Society of Jesus, a male congregation of the Catholic Church. In 1664, he arrived in Canada, where his order was sent to convert the Aboriginal peoples. As he travelled from the western end of Lake Superior to Sept-Îles, and from Trois-Rivières to the South of Lake Ontario, Louis Nicolas’ interest in Aboriginal languages and culture increased. Nonetheless, according to the Relations Jésuites, Nicolas did not always behave accordingly towards the native peoples. In fact, in a memoir by Antoine Alet, secretary to Sulpician superior M. de Queylus, the Jesuit was “described as a quick tempered and rather vain man.”Moreover, his congregation was not pleased with him as he attempted to tame two bear cubs at the Jesuits' residence in Sillery, in the hope of impressing the King. In 1675, Louis Nicolas left Canada and returned to France. As nothing more was heard of him after his departure, the year of his death is unknown.