Julius Thomsen

Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen was a Danish chemist, born in Copenhagen on 16 February 1826, noted in thermochemistry for the Thomsen and Berthelot principle. He spent his life in Copenhagen. From 1847 to 1856 he taught chemistry at the Polytechnic, of which he was the director from 1883 to 1892, from 1856 to 1866 he was on the staff of the military high school, and in 1866 he was appointed professor of chemistry at the university, a chair he retained until his retirement from active work in 1891. A friend and colleague of Ludwig A. Colding, an early advocate of the principle of conservation of energy, Thomsen did much to found the field of thermochemistry and carried out a great number of determinations of heats of reaction between 1869 and 1882. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1880, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1884, and was awarded the Royal Societys Davy Medal in 1883.