2 Quotes & Sayings By Henri Moissan
Henri Moissan (1852–1907) was a French mineralogist and physicist. He discovered and named a number of new minerals, including berzelianite and rhodonite. Henri Moissan was the only child of François Moissan (1823–1886) and Marie Maurès (1824–1889). In 1866, François Moissan became professor of Mineralogy at the École Normale Supérieure. In 1869, he was appointed Director of the École des Mines de Paris
Henri was born in Nancy, France on March 26, 1852. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from 1869 to 1873, where he met Eugène Canseliet. In 1873, Moissan graduated with a degree in physics.
He received his Ph.D from the University of Paris in 1876 for a thesis on "The Physics of Voltaic Cells". In 1877, he became an assistant professor at the Faculty of Science in Nancy. In 1878, he married Jeanne-Marie Leopoldine Brunet (1860–1951), with whom he had three children: Alice-Henriette Moissan (1903–1973), François-Joseph Moissan (born in 1893 but died in infancy in 1895), and Gertrude Moesson (born in 1898).
His son François-Joseph later became an expert in Iron technology. In 1880, François-Joseph joined his father in Nancy as an engineer for SFPL ("Societe Française des Poudres et Flore"). The following year, they moved to Toulouse, where his father had been appointed Director of Research for SFPL. Henri worked with his father on experiments involving fulminate explosives for mining applications.
His research was directed towards developing new explosives that would be safer than those currently available. In 1888, Moissan returned to Paris to become Professor of Experimental Physics at Collège de France where he worked with Emmanuel Lippmann on studies of cathode rays. As director of the physics laboratory at SFPL from 1889 to 1899, he experimented on electric batteries using electrolyte solutions to produce high voltage discharges that could be used for scientific research into high voltage phenomena including X-rays and lightning bolts generated by high voltage sparks between two electrodes. He also worked with Paul Langevin on experiments related to cathode rays discovered