Jean-Baptiste Dumas

Beginning as an apothecary apprentice in Geneva, Dumas moved to Paris on the advice of Alexander von Humboldt, becoming professor of chemistry at the École Polytechnique and Sorbonne at age twenty-nine. In 1831, he invented the Dumas combustion method for nitrogen analysis, a cornerstone of analytical chemistry.

In 1834, his discovery that chlorine can substitute for hydrogen in organic molecules (theory of substitution) demolished Jöns Jacob Berzelius's electrochemical dualism, laying the foundations of modern organic structural chemistry. Dumas served as Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, President of the Municipal Council of Paris, and Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Sciences.