Talk:Charles Thilorier

Delete this article
This article incorrectly claims that "Charles Thilorier" discovered dry ice. This claim is based on the article:

Duane H. D. Roller (July 1952) "Thilorier and the first solidification of a 'permanent' gas," Isis, 43 : 109-113.

Thilorier wrote a number of articles on gases, their properties and their liquefaction; however, he (almost) always gave his name merely as "Thilorier". Roller tried to find who Thilorier was. Roller thought that he'd identified Thilorier as "Charles Thilorier". The claim is based on a footnote in this book:

Arnaud Paul Edmond Thénard, Un grand Français: Le chimiste Thénard, 1777-1857 (Dijon, France:  Jobard, 1950).

The author, Paul Thénard, wrote a biography of his father, Louis-Jacques Thénard, a chemist. On page 176 of Thénard's book, he states that he knows only that "Charles-Saint-Ange Thilorier" was a student at the Ecole Polytechnique and that he was probably the son of Jean-Charles Thilorier. It does NOT state that Charles Thilorier discovered dry ice.

So Roller's article really provides no evidence that Charles Thilorier discovered dry ice.

The man who discovered dry ice was actually Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier (1790-1844).

He is identified explicitly in a French patent (#2896) for a machine to compress gas ("une machine à comprimer le gaz"), which was awarded on May 16, 1831. The patent appears here:

(Ministre du Commerce), Descriptions des Machines et Procédés Consignés dans les Brevets d'Invention, …  [Descriptions of the machines and processes contained in the invention patents, … ], (Paris, France:  Huzard, 1836), volume 30, pages 251-267.

He is identified as an employee of the postal service (l'Administration des postes) in Paris. It is also mentioned that in 1829, the Academy of Sciences awarded his invention the Montyon prize for mechanical inventions.

With this information, Adrien Thilorier can be identified as the author of two papers that Roller cites as having been written by "A. Thilorier", one of which identifies "A. Thilorier" as the man who first prepared dry ice:

A. Thilorier (1836) "Acide carbonique liquéfié et solidifié" (Liquified and solidified carbonic acid [i.e., carbon dioxide]), Journal de Chimie médicale, de Pharmacie, et de Toxicologie, …, 2nd series, 2 :  3-8.

From this information, Adrien can be shown to be the author of all of the other papers and inventions by "Thilorier". Adrien can further be identified as a lawyer who resided in Paris and who worked for the postal service, and as the son of Jean-Charles Thilorier, a lawyer who was interested in science.

All of this work has already been done by French researchers; see, for example,

Joost Mertens (2003) "Du côté d’un chimiste nommé Thilorier: Balthazar Claës modèle d’Adrien Thilorier," L'Année balzacienne, 1 (4) :  251-263.

Since this article is incorrect, it should be deleted. Meanwhile, I'm preparing an article on Adrien Thilorier. Cwkmail (talk) 04:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)