Jean Baptiste Andre Dumas was born on Bastille Day in the year 1800. He was son of the town clerk of Alais in southern France, where he received a classical education before being apprenticed to an apothecary. In 1816 he moved to Geneva, where he received an excellent education in chemistry (de La Rive), physics (Pictet), and botany (Candolle). In 1823 he went to Paris, where he was to remain for the rest of his long life. In 1826 Dumas described his method for determining vapor densities and used it to make a determination of the atomic weights of carbon and oxygen. Later he determined the atomic weights of some 30 elements and his work was a valuable prelude to the resolution of the atomic weight problem subsequent to the Karlsruhe Conference of 1860. Dumas was a persuasive advocate for his views on organic structures and became the chief critic of the Berzelius/Liebig/Wöhler school. His demonstration that chlorine could replace the hydrogens in acetic acid without any noticeable change in type was a severe blow to the universality of Berzelius’ dualistic theory. In spite of their early derision, Liebig and Wöhler were later to concede the arguments of Dumas and his younger French colleagues. In 1867 Liebig even said that he had given up organic chemistry since, with Dumas’ theory of substitution as a foundation, organic chemistry needs only laborers. It was not to prove that easy. Dumas’ Lecons Sur la Philosophie Chimique (1839) and L’Essai de Statique Chemie des Etres Organises (1842) were very influential in their time, while his eight-volume Traite de Chimie Appliquee Aux Arts (1828) was in many ways a precursor of Muspratt’s.

Dumas became a member of the National Legislative Assembly in 1849 and briefly served as minister of agriculture and commerce. Subsequently he became President of the Municipal Council of Paris and later Master of the French Mint. Beginning in 1862 he edited the first four volumes of the standard edition of the Ouevres de Lavoisier.

Reference
DSB, Vol. IV, pp. 242-248.

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