Paul Sabatier

He was married to Mademoiselle Herail and the couple was blessed with four daughters. One of his daughters was married to renowned Italian chemist, Emilio Pomilio.

Sabatier was a reserved person and was quite fond of gardening and art.

Sabatier passed away on August 14, 1941.

He was born on November 5, 1854, in Carcassonne in Southern France.

After attending the local Lycée, he sat for the entrance exams of ‘École Normale Supérieure’ and ‘École Polytechnique’ and after being selected by both the institutes he opted to join the former.

He began attending the ‘École Normale Supérieure’ from 1874 and graduated after three years as the topper in his class.

After completing graduation, he worked for a year as a teacher of physics in a local school in Nîmes.

In 1878 he joined ‘Collège de France’ as a laboratory assistant of Marcellin Berthelot, under whom he completed his ‘Doctor of Science’ in 1880. His thesis was based on the thermochemistry of sulfur and metallic sulfides.

After his doctorate, he served as maître de conference in physics in the faculty of sciences at the ‘University of Bordeaux’ for a year.

In January 1882, he joined the ‘University of Toulouse’ and taught physics. In 1884 Sabatier became a professor of chemistry at the university, a position he held for decades till his retirement in 1930.

In 1887 he founded a multidisciplinary journal, ‘Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de Toulouse’ along with Thomas Joannes Stieltjes, , E. Cosserat, Benjamin Baillaud, C. Fabre, T. Chauvin, Marie Henri Andoyer, G. Berson, A. Destrem and A. Legoux.

In 1905, the ‘University of Toulouse’ appointed him the Dean of its Faculty of Science.

His early research work included chemical and physical analysis of chlorides, sulphides, chromates and copper compounds.

His most remarkable discovery, known as the ‘Sabatier reaction’ and also as the ‘Sabatier process’ that he brought out in the 1910s remains his primary invention. The process takes into account reaction of hydrogen with carbon dioxide at a high level of temperature and pressure with nickel as a catalyst to form water and methane.

Many of his inventions related to the application of metal hydrogenation catalysts, aided in forming the foundations of various industries such as that of oil hydrogenation, margarine oil and synthetic menthol.