Jean-Baptiste Boussingault

Jean-Baptiste Boussingault was a French chemist, born in Paris in 1801, who contributed to agricultural science, petroleum science and metallurgy. After training at the school of mines at Saint-Etienne he worked in the Alsace asphalt mines, then went to South America in 1822, where he discovered the mineral gaylussite, linked goitre to iodine in salt and climbed Chimborazo to a record altitude in 1831. Back in France he became professor of chemistry at Lyon and in 1839 held the chair of agricultural and analytical chemistry at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. He showed that plants do not take up free nitrogen from the air, laying the basis of the nitrogen cycle, and set up what is regarded as the first agricultural experiment station.