Paul Sabatier

Paul Sabatier (; 5 November 1854 – 14 August 1941) was a French chemist, born in Carcassonne. In 1912, Sabatier was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Victor Grignard. Sabatier was honoured for his work improving the hydrogenation of organic species in the presence of metals.

Education

Sabatier studied at the École Normale Supérieure, starting in 1874. Three years later, he graduated at the top of his class. but it was later proven that these were not real chemical compounds but just metal oxides with nitrogen dioxide physically absorbed on them.

In 1896 Henri Moissan and Charles Moureu discovered that acetylene reacts with some transition metals. Bearing in mind Prosper de Wilde (1835-1916) hydrogenated acetylene on platinum black in 1874, Sabatier and Senderens picked up the topic and continued investigations in the area.

The methanation reactions of COx were first discovered by Sabatier and Senderens in 1902.

The Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France was named in honour of Paul Sabatier, as is one of Carcassonne's high schools. Paul Sabatier was a co-founder of the Annales de la Faculté des Sciences de Toulouse, together with the mathematician Thomas Joannes Stieltjes.

Sabatier died on 14 August, 1941 in Toulouse at the age of 86. He was Catholic