Marcellin Berthelot

Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot (French: [bɛʁtəlo]) FRS FRSE (25 October 1827 – 18 March
1907) was a French chemist and politician noted for the Thomsen–Berthelot
principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic
substances,[1] providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob
Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. Berthelot was convinced
that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized
foods would replace farms and pastures. “Why not,” he asked, “if it proved cheaper and better to
make the same materials than to grow them?”[1][2]
He was considered "one of the most famous chemists in the world."[2] Upon being appointed to the
post of Minister of Foreign Affairs for the French government in 1895, he was considered "the most
eminent living chemist" in France.[3] In 1901, he was elected as one of the "Forty Immortals" of
the Académie française.[4][5] He gave all his discoveries not only to the French government but to
humanity.[6]
He was born in Rue du Mouton, Paris,[7] France, the son of a doctor. He decided with his friend, the
great historian Ernest Renan, not to attend a "grande école" where the vast majority of intellectuals
were being educated.[8] After doing well at school in history and philosophy, he became a scientist.
He was an atheist but was very influenced by his wife, who was a Calvinist[9] (his wife came
from Louis Breguet's family).[10][11]

Discoveries
The fundamental conception that underlay all Berthelot's chemical work was that all chemical
phenomena depend on the action of physical forces which can be determined and measured. When
he began his active career it was generally believed that, although some instances of the synthetic
production of organic substances had been observed, on the whole organic chemistry remained an
analytical science and could not become a constructive one, because the formation of the
substances with which it deals required the intervention of vital activity in some shape.[12]
To this attitude he offered uncompromising opposition, and by the synthetic production of
numerous hydrocarbons, natural fats, sugars and other bodies he proved that organic compounds
can be formed by ordinary methods of chemical manipulation and obey the same principles as
inorganic substances, thus exhibiting the "creative character in virtue of which chemistry actually
realizes the abstract conceptions of its theories and classifications—a prerogative so far possessed
neither by the natural nor by the historical sciences."[12]