BERTHOLLET, Claude Louis, COUNT, French chemist of distinction: b. Talloire, Savoy, 9 Dec. 1748; d. Paris, 7 Nov. 1822. He studied medicine at Turin; went to Paris, where he became connected with La voisier, was admitted in 1780 a member of the Academy of Sciences in that city; was made in 1794 professor in the normal school there, and was sent to Italy in 1796, in order to select the plunder that was to be carried to Paris. He followed Bonaparte to Egypt, and returned with him in 1799. After the 18th Brumaire he was made a member of the afterward count and grand-officer of the Legion of Honor. In 1804 Napoleon appointed him Senator for the district of Montpellier. In 1813 he received the grand cross of the Order of the Reunion. He voted, however, for the establishment of a provisional government and the dethronement of Napoleon. Louis XVIII made him a peer; but Napoleon passed him by in 1815. After the restoration of Louis, he took his seat again in the chamber of peers. Among the inventions and new processes with which the sciences and the arts were enriched by him, the most important are those for the charring of vessels to preserve water in ships, for the stiffening and glazing of linen, for the artificial production of nitre, etc., but princi
pally that for the bleaching of vegetable sub stances by means of chlorine, which, since 1786, has been in general use in France. Be sides different essays in the collections of the Academy and the Institute, he wrote several larger works, among which his 'Essai de Stati que Chimique) (1803; translated into English, German and Italian) must be considered as the most important. The complicated phenomena of chemistry were here treated as under the strict and simple laws of mechanics. He had also a large share in the reformation of the chemical nomenclature, as well as in the publica tion of the work that appeared on this subject in Paris, 1787— 'Methode de Nomenclature Consult Cuvier, (Eloge de Oaude Louis Berthollet) (Paris 1826).