Henry Louis Le Chatelier, 1850 - 1936

Henry Louis Le Chatelier, whose death occurred on 17 September, 1936, at Miribel-les-Echelles (Ise"re), was born in Paris on 8 October, 1850. His father, Louis Le Chatelier, was closely associated as an engineer with the construction of the railways of France, Northern Spain, and Southern Austria, with the development of the Siemens-Martin process of steel making, with the production of aluminium, and with other important steps in the evolution of French industry. Both he and his wife came from families which included many names associated with the sciences and the arts. Henry was the eldest of six children, of whom Louis became a director of blast furnaces, Andre a metallurgist of note, and Alfred professor of Mussulman Sociology in the College de France, and one of the inspirers of French policy in Northern Africa. After his schooling at the College Rollin, which he always recalled with pleasure, Henry Le Chatelier entered the Ecole Polytechnique in 1869, and while still a student took part as a sub-lieutenant in the defence of Paris, passing in 1871 to the Ecole des Mines. In the course of the celebration of his scientific jubilee at the Sorbonne in 1922 he gave some reminiscences of his student days, and spoke of the influence of his father and of his professors in inculcating a love of the experimental method and a distrust of purely verbal explanations and of mathematical reasoning claiming to override experimental results. This attitude remained with him to the end.