Ix Annual Report of the Cotiucil. 



Francois Marie Raoult was born on May loth, 1830, at 

 Fournes, in tlie Departement du Nord. He had no personal 

 means, and after teaching privately, became " aspirant-repetiteur," 

 or supernumerary usher, at the Lycee of Rheims in 1853, the year 

 in which he published his first paper on electric endosmosis in 

 the Comptes Rendus. He occupied various teaching posts at 

 the College or Municipal Secondary School of Saint Die (1855), 

 and the Lycees of Rheims (1856-9), Bar-le-Duc (i860) and 

 Sens (1862), taking meanwhile the degree of licencie-es-sciences 

 physiques and the diploma of agrege, which allowed him to 

 occupy a post of permanent master in a lycee or State Secondary 

 School. At Sens he carried out a series of investigations on the 

 electro-motive force of cells of the Daniell type, which he 

 embodied in a thesis for the degree of docteur-es-sciences, 

 presented to and accepted by the Faculty of Sciences of Paris 

 in 1864. The work was neglected at the time, and has only 

 comparatively recently received a theoretical interpretation 

 through the researches of Helmholtz on the thermodynamics 

 of cells. This was followed by further memoirs on electro- 

 chemistry, which soon won for their author a place in University 

 teaching. He was appointed in 1867 as "charge du cours de 

 chimie " at the Faculte des Sciences of Grenoble, and became 

 titular professor in 1870. He held this chair of chemistry until 

 his death, on April ist, 1901. The regulations enforcing retirement 

 at the age of 70 had been suspended for him. During the years 

 1 873-1 892 he held the chair of chemistry and toxicology at the 

 Ecole de Medecine et de Pharmacie in addition to his other 

 chair. 



Down to the year 1S70 his memoirs dealt chiefly with 

 electro-chemistry. They include, however, a memoir on the 

 absorption of hydrogen by nickel, which has found a recent 

 application in the work of Sabatier and Senderens on the hydro- 

 genation of unsaturated hydro-carbons in the presence of this 

 metal. During the years 1870 to 1882 he published a number 

 of memoirs on the absorption of gases by solutions and solids, 

 and especially of carbonic acid by the alkaline earths. In 1873 



