PEDRO DE ALCANTARA LISBOA, QUÍMICO BRASILEIRO DO SÉCULO XIX

Abstract

The subject of the present article is a Brazilian chemist who lived and worked in the nineteenth century and who is hardly known today. He was the first person in Brazil, still in the first half of the nineteenth century, to write chemical equations in the description of actual reactions, and also the first to use equations in order to perform stoichiometric calculations. Although commonplace and trivial today, these were quite innovative in the 1840’s. He had a diploma from the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures of Paris, from which he graduated in 1845 as a “chemical civil engineer”. Back in Brazil he continued his career, pioneering different aspects of chemistry in the country, and publishing continuously for a number of years on several chemical topics, as well as in other technical subjects. After what seemed to be a meteoric career, he became disillusioned with many setbacks, mostly political, and took up a different career, as a mathematician.

Keywords

• Pedro de Alcantara Lisboa
• early use of chemical equations
• stoichiometric calculations
• Brazilian chemistry in the 1840’s.