Walthère Victor Spring

Walthère Victor Spring (6 March 1848 – 17 July 1911) was a Belgian experimental chemist and a professor at the University of Liège who contributed to ideas on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the Greenhouse Effect.

As a physical chemist he demonstrated the formation of certain compounds such as metal sulphides under high pressure conditions.

He worked for a while with an arms manufacturer in Liège but was encouraged by the chemist Jean-Servais Stas (1813–1891) to study and he joined the Mining School from where he received a diploma in 1871.

In 1886 he gave a presentation at the academy on variability of carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere and noted that the city of Liège had a higher concentration than the surrounding countryside, possibly due to the use of coal for heating homes and the slow burning of grisou in the Saint-Jacques district which produced methane.

Along with Leon Roland he examined weather measurements and noted that the air cooled less slowly due to the water vapour and carbon dioxide.