Walter, Philippe
WALTER, PHILIPPE
(b. Cracow, Poland, 31 May 1810; d. Paris, France, 9 April 1847), Chemistry.
After completing his doctoral studies at Cracow, Walter took part in the unsuccessful popular uprising of 1830 – 1831 against the Russian rulers of Poland. He subsequently found refuge in Paris, where he joined the group associated with Dumas. In 1829 Dumas had been a founder of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, a school for advanced study in the applied sciences; and Walter became a teacher of analytical chemistry there.
Most of Walter’s investigations concerned natural plant products. In 1838 he and Pierre Joseph Pelletier isolated toluene as a product of the destructive distillation of pine resin. They called it retinaphtha and correctly determined its composition, noting that it contained the benzoic radical and represented a hydrocarbon sought by chemists, since it was the hypothetical hydrocarbon formed through the replacement of the oxygen atoms of benzoic acid by hydrogen.
In 1840 Pelletier and Walter discovered another important hydrocarbon. By fractional distillation of naphtha they isolated an analogue of ethylene. Determination of its vapor density gave them a formula of C8H16. Originally named naphthene, it subsequently came to be known as caprylene, after caprylic alcohol, from which it also could be prepared (the modern name is octene).
In 1839 Walter had distinguished between menthol and camphor, finding the molecular formula of menthol by determining its vapor density. This information, together with Dumas’s determination of its composition, enabled him to show that menthol was a compound distinct from camphor.
In 1842 Walter observed that the reaction of camphoric anhydride and sulfuric acid yielded sulfocamphoric acid and carbon monoxide. This reaction was the first indication that carbon could be replaced in organic compounds by other elements. Walter noted the importance of this fact, and in an 1843 paper he quoted from a work in which Dumas had suggested that substitution in organic compounds might not be restricted to hydrogen; perhaps oxygen, nitrogen, and even carbon might be replaced. The composition of sulfocamphoric acid clearly showed that an SO2 group had replaced a carbon atom in the camphoric anhydride. Walter claimed that this work supported Dumas’s substitution (1834) and type (1839) theories. In the latter theory organic molecules were considered to be unitary types with properties depending less on the nature of the elements than on their position and arrangement. Thus, the replacement of carbon in camphoric anhydride bolstered Dumas’s attempt to establish a novel and controversial theory of organic compounds.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Original Works. Walter wrote a treatise on Polish chemical nomenclature, Wyklad nomenklatury chemicznej poskiej i porównanie jej z nomenklaturami lacińskq, francuskq, angielskq i niemieckq (Cracow, 1842; 2nd ed., 1844). His papers are listed in the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, VI. 256 – 257. The more important include “Examen des produits provenant du traitement de la résine dans la fabrication du gaz pour l’éclairage,” in Annales de chimie et de physique, 2nd ser., 67 (1838), 269 – 303, written with P. J. Pelletier; “Mémoire sur l’essence de menthe poivrée cristallisée,” ibid., 72 (1839), 83- 109 : “Mémoire sur 1’action qu’exerce l’acide sulfurique anhydre sur l’acide camphorique anhydre,” ibid74 (1840), 38 – 52; “Recherches chimiques sur les bitumes,” in Journal de pharmacie, 26 (1840), 549 – 568, written with P. J. Pelletier; and “Mémoire sur l’acide camphorique anhydre,” in Annales de chimie et de physique, 3rd. ser., 9 (1843), 177 – 200.
II. Secondary Literature. There is a biography of Walter by S. Sekowski and S. Szostkiewicz, Serce i retorta, czyli zywot chemiiposwiecony (Warsaw, 1957). See also Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN, XII (Warsaw, 1969), p. 96, and J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, IV (London, 1964), 340, 367, 558, and 868.
Albert B. Costa