Henri Moissan

[7] Moissan became a trainee in pharmacy in 1871 and in 1872 he began working for a chemist in Paris, where he was able to save a person poisoned with arsenic.

He decided to study chemistry and began first in the laboratory of Edmond Frémy at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, and later in that of Pierre Paul Dehérain at the École Pratique des Haute Études.

He also became qualified as first-class pharmacist at the École Supérieure de Pharmacie in 1879, and received his doctoral degree there in 1880.

[7] He soon climbed through the ranks of the School of Pharmacy, and was appointed Assistant Lecturer, Senior Demonstrator, and finally Professor of Toxicology by 1886.

Moissan died suddenly in Paris in February 1907, shortly after his return from receiving the Nobel Prize in Stockholm.

[9] Moissan published his first scientific paper, about carbon dioxide and oxygen metabolism in plants, with Dehérain in 1874.

After Moissan received his Ph.D. on cyanogen and its reactions to form cyanures in 1880, his friend Landrine offered him a position at an analytic laboratory.

[15] The French Academy of Science sent three representatives, Marcellin Berthelot, Henri Debray, and Edmond Frémy, to verify the results, but Moissan was unable to reproduce them, owing to the absence from the hydrogen fluoride of traces of potassium fluoride present in the previous experiments.

[1] In 1893, Moissan began studying fragments of a meteorite found in Meteor Crater near Diablo Canyon in Arizona.

Moissan's 1892 observation of the color of fluorine gas (2), compared to air (1) and chlorine (3)
Moissan attempting to create synthetic diamonds using an electric arc furnace