[Charles Gerhardt's life and work]

Abstract

Charles Gerhardt's life and work is rather well-known thanks to Grimaux and Tiffeneau. His reform of the equivalents, his classification, his obtention of organic acid anhydrids and his famous Treatise of Organic Chemistry. His active collaboration to the Revue scientifique et industrielle du Docteur Quesneville, the creation of his Comptes-Rendus des Travaux de Chimie. Are not so often quoted. Thanks to his translations and reviews, German chemical advancements became well known in France Gerhardt was Liebig's translator for almost all his life, even through the fluctuations of their personal relation. He was the representative of German chemistry in France. With Auguste Laurent, with whom he is constantly associated, things need to be examined precisely. Laurent and Gerhardt, friends at a moment, cannot be confounded. Though they worked together for some years, they were not engaged in a similar project. Besides an experimentalist, Laurent was essentially a theorician of chemistry, whereas Gerhardt refused to think about atoms and arrangements. Formulas have to describe relations between facts, in no case anything about arrangements. For posterity however, Gerhardt will be, on the same level as Laurent, the creator of modern chemistry doctrines.