Henri Louis Le Chatelier- A man of principle
Born in Paris on October 8, 1850 into a family of well educated and acomplished engineers and architects, Henri Louis Le Chatelier received his early training from his father. He was inspired by mathematics and chemistry, particularly their relevance in every day life during the industrial revolution in France. Louis was formally educated in the Ecole des Mines and the College of France where he then became a proffessor of inorganic science.
He researched many projects that were widely of interest and gave promise to industrial application. Henri Louis Le Chatelier was a friend to the practising chemist whose method of work included theory and the important proof- practice!
Le Chatelier's interest in thermodynamics provoked him to investigate chemical equilibrium. His experiments and research allowed him to come up with a general qualitative principle, called Le Chatelier's principle:
Any system in stable chemical equilibrium, subjected to the influence of an external cause which tends to change either its temperature or its condensation (pressure, concentration, number of molecules in unit volume), either as a whole or in some of its parts, can undergo such internal modifications as would, if produced alone, bring about a change in temperature or of condensation of opposite sign to that resulting form the external cause.This cumbersome expression of the principle was published in 1884 and shows that Le Chatelier, himself, was frustrated in trying to explain clearly what he found.
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