Francois-Marie Raoult

François-Marie Raoult (10 May 1830 – 1 April 1901) was a French chemist who conducted research into the behavior of solutions, and carried a series of experiments to study the vapor pressure of a number of binary solution.  He gave an important law about vapor pressure of the solution, known as Raoult’s law.

In 1882, Raoult published his results on the effects of nondissociating organic solutes, from which he deduced a general law controlling the lowering of freezing points. Four years later he extended this work to show the effect of solutes on a vapor pressure.

Raoult was the first show the relation between the freezing and boiling points and vapor pressure of solutions and the molecular weight of the dissolved substance. This relationship is known as Raoult’s Law.

His work opened a new field for the determination of molecular weights and his discovery that acids bases and salts produced ‘abnormal’ depressions of the vapor pressure gave great support to the electrolytic theory of Arrhenius.

Raoult published the formulations of his laws in the Comptes rendus for 1882 and 1887.
Francois-Marie Raoult