Émile Amagat
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Émile Hilaire Amagat (2 January 1841 in Saint-Satur – 15 February 1915) was a French physicist.[1] His doctoral thesis, published in 1872, expanded on the work of Thomas Andrews, and included plots of the isotherms of carbon dioxide at high pressures.[2] Amagat published a paper in 1877 that contradicted the current understanding at the time, concluding that the coefficient of compressibility of fluids decreased with increasing pressure.[2] He continued to publish data on isotherms for a number of different gases between 1879 and 1882,[2] and invented the hydraulic manometer, which was able to withstand up to 3200 atmospheres, as opposed to 400 atmospheres using a glass apparatus.[3] In 1880 he published his law of partial volumes, now known as Amagat's law.
For his studies, he developed many original piezometer devices. To achieve high pressures, he first used a church tower for about 63 m of height, then a mine shaft at Verpilleux near Saint-Étienne for a 327 m mercury column, achieving ~430 atm, in order to study the equations of state of certain gases.[4] His expertise led him to collaborate with the physicist Peter Tait in the development of a piezometer suitable for measuring the compressibility of liquids.[5]
In 1886 he constructed a steel manometer that employed a reversed hydraulic press to generate the pressure. The high pressure was generated by a force pump and screw-driven plunger in a steel receiver. This pressure was then transmitted via liquid in a tube into the sample chamber containing the gas or liquid. The apparatus had a steel cylinder of about 3 cm internal diameter with a much larger steel jacket, and compression was continued by the screw device after initial pumping. To measure the pressure accurately, he used a double-headed free-piston manometer with the piston made gas-tight with viscous liquids such as molasses (for the small pistons) and castor oil (for the large pistons). Each free-piston has two heads. The small head has area is pressed against the higher pressure chamber with pressure , and the large head has area pressed against another chamber with lower pressure . The piston is balanced statically when . By using pistons with , and measuring using a mercury column height manometer (up to 5.20 m), it was possible to measure pressures exceeding 3000 atm at an accuracy of ~1%.[6]
Amagat was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences on 9 June 1902.[7] A unit of number density, amagat, was named after him. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1897.[8] E. F. Amagat, was elected to honorary membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.[9]
The French Academy of Sciences gave him the posthumous award of the Prix Jean Reynaud for 1915.[10]
In film
- In 2016 Polish film Marie Curie, Amagat was played by Daniel Olbrychski.
References
External links
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- ↑ Memoirs and proceedings of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society FOURTH SERIES Eighth VOLUME 1894
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