To the Moon! — Theophile-Jules Pelouze
Theophile-Jules Pelouze made it possible for Jules Verne to imagine traveling to the moon. The son of an industrial chemist, Pelouze came to Paris to study pharmacy, but he gravitated toward work as an assistant in the laboratories of some of France’s foremost chemists. With support from his mentor, Gay-Lussac, Pelouze began teaching chemistry in Lille and later attained positions on the faculty at the Ecole Polytechnique and at the Mint. Pelouze also ran his own commercial chemical research laboratory.
Pelouze was an adept innovator in the laboratory, and he produced important discoveries in the fields of organic chemistry, mineral chemistry, and industrial chemistry. Pelouze’s work on nitrocellulose and related compounds illustrates the breadth of influence of the leading chemists of this period. Nitrocellulose is an explosive material obtained by infusing wood fiber or other organic material, like cotton, with nitric acid. The resulting material, also known at gun cotton, is more explosive than gunpowder.
Related chemicals include celluloid, the hazardous polymer used in early motion picture films, and explosives nitroglycerine and dynamite. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, learned chemistry from Pelouze. Nobel’s invention made him the fortune that endows the annual Nobel Prizes in science and literature.
The prospect of an explosive material more powerful than gun powder inspired the imagination of Jules Verne, a popular writer of science and travel books and a contemporary of Pelouze. Verne’s fourth adventure novel, “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865), tells the story of traveling to the moon in a space capsule fired from an enormous canon. As related by Verne’s protagonist, Pelouze’s new explosive had the advantages that it was unaffected by water, ignited at a low temperature, burned quickly, and would impart a velocity four times greater than gun powder.
Theophile-Jules Pelouze, chemist, is one of the 72 scientists and engineers named on the Eiffel Tower.
