Le Blanc, Max Julius Louis

Le Blanc, Max Julius Louis

b. Barten, East prussia[now Poland], 26 May 1865;d. Leipzig Germany, 31 July 1943)

Chemistry.

Le blanc received his chemical education at the universities of Tübingen, Munich, and Berlin, where in 1888 he became privatdocent with A. w. Hofmann in organic chemistry. In 1891 he went to wilhelm Ostwald’s institute at Leipzig and wrote his inaugural essay, “On the Electromotive Force of Polarization.”

In 1896 he left his position as extraordinary professor at Leipzig to become the director of the electrochemical division of the Höchster Farbenfabriken. Five years later he accepted a call to the chair of physical chemistry at the technical institute at Karlsruhe, and in 1906 he became director of the physical chemical institute at Leipzig. He was personally responsible for much of the building and equipping of these two institutions. After his retirement in 1934 he remained a participant in scientific Akademie der wissenshaften zu Leipzig.

Most of Le Blanc’s chemical studies involved the phenomenon of electrolytes and the groundwork for the nature of the decomposition voltage of aqueous solutions of the decomposition voltage of aqueous understanding of the processes occurring at the electrodes in electrolysis. Noting that the decomposi- tion potentials of many aqueous solutions of salts were nearly the same (1.7 volts). he concluded that the electrode processes were identical and that hydrogen and oxygen gas were discharged at the electrodes.

In 1891 Le Blanc introduced the concept of over voltage,the amount by which the decomposition potential is higher than the calculated value. This phenomenon has been most studied with hydrogen, where the effect is significant. The introduction of the hydrogen electrode is perhaps his most important contribution to science. In 1893 he observed that if a stream of hydrogen gas is allowed to flow over the surface of a platinized platinum electrode, it behaves like and electrode of hydrogen gas, with the platinum having no effect.

Interested in industrial chemistry, Le Blanc developed a process for the electrochemical regeneration of chromic acid, which found extensive use in the manufacture of dyes. During World War I he worked on a method of reclaiming rubber. He wrote several highly successful textbooks, including Lehrbuch der Elektrochemie.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Le Blanc’s major textbook, Lehrbuch der Elektrochemie (Leipzig, 1895), went through twelve German eds., the latest appearing in 1925. This work was translated into French, and into English as Elements of Electrochemistry, willis R. Whitney, trans, (London, 1896); and A Textbook of Electrochemistry, W. R. Whitney and John W.Brown, trans, (New York, 1907). Doe Darstellung des Chroms und seiner verbindungen mit Hilfe des elektrischen Stroms (Halle, 1902) appeared in English as The Production of Chromium and Its compounds by the Aid of the Electric Current, Joseph W. Richards, trans, (Easton, Pa, 1904). Most of Le Blanc’s important research on electrode processes is reported in “De elektromotorischen Kräfte der Polarization,”in Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie, 8 (1891), 299; 12 (1893), 333; the hydrogen electrode is discussed in the second paper.

II. Secondary Literature. A listing of Le Blanc’s more than one hundred publications and a short biographical sketch is in M. Volmer, “Max Le Blanc als Forscher und Lehrer” In Zeitschrift für Elektorchemie und angewandte physikalische chemie, 41 (1935), 3097-314. Care must be taken in using this bibliography, as only the first of a series of several papers with the same title is listed. Karl Bonhoeffer has written two short biographical notes: “Max Le Blanc zum 26.5.1935,”in Forschungen und Fortschritte, 11 (1935), 191—192; and “Max Le Blanc,”ibid., 19 (1943), 371—372. The two 1935 sketches honored Le Blanc on his seventieth birthday, and the third is a brief obituary notice.

Sheldon J. Kopperl