Jean S. Stas

Posted by Tel Asiado Aug 21, 2008

Great Thinkers Datebook: August 21

Today, August 21 (1813), is the birthday of Jean S Stas, Belgian analystical chemist known for his accurate determination of atomic weights, a most skillful chemical analyst of the nineteenth century.

Stas was born in Leuven. Initially, he trained as a physician. but later changed to chemistry and worked at the Polytechnic School in Paris under Jean-Baptiste Dumas. The two of them setup the atomic weight of carbon by weighing a sample of the pure matereial, burned it in pure ooxyge, then weighed the carbon dioxide produced.

He was appointed professor at Brussels's Royal Miltary School in 1840.

Stas became famous after he established the atomic weights of the elements more accurately than had ever been done before, using oxygen = 16 as the standard, laying the foundation for the periodic system of elements of Dmitri Mendeleev.

He died in Brussels on December 13, 1891.