Scientist. He received professional recognition as a French chemist in the 19th century for his research leading to the over-the-counter drug Aspirin. His Swiss-born father was a manufacturer of "white lead," which today has been banned in most countries as it caused lead poison. Needing to know more about white lead, he was sent, at his father's request, to learn chemistry at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic in Germany and then to business school. After returning to France, he and his father had difficulties working together even after several attempts. A long paper on the revision of the formulas of natural silicates which he wrote in 1834 was accepted for publication by the "Journal of Practical Chemistry," and in 1835, before his nineteenth birthday, his further research had won him the honor of election as corresponding member of the Natural History Society of Strasbourg. Not wanting to be a manufacturer of white lead, at the age of twenty, he enlisted in the army in a cavalry regiment, but after a few months in military life, he purchased his discharge. Knowing he wanted a career in chemistry, he resumed his chemistry studies with Justus von Liebig at the University of Giessen in Germany from 1836 to 1837. After a final attempt to work with his father failed, he began studying with Jean-Baptiste-Andre Dumas at the University of Paris receiving his doctorate in 1841. As a star pupil, he may have received the best chemistry education of the era by studying in both France and Germany. In 1841 he became an associate professor of chemistry at the University of the Montpellier, receiving a full professorship in 1844. The same year he married a lady from Scotland and the couple had two sons and a daughter. With parents who spoke French and German fluently, he became trilingual after his wife taught him English. With little funding for research at the university, he became frustrated leaving for Paris in 1848 to work with Auguste Laurent. By 1851, he started a School of Practical Chemistry in Paris as von Liebig had done in Germany. The school was not financially successful, thus his wife's family them support. Much to his surprise his research was rejected by a group of established chemists, led by Dumas. He was labeled as a radical with no tact and was involved in many disputes between colleagues. His synthesis of acid anhydrides reestablished his reputation, and in 1855 he was appointed professor of chemistry at both the university and pharmacy school in Strasbourg. He did not belong to any important scientific societies but on April 21, 1856 he was elected to the French Society of Scientists. Within months of this award, he was taken suddenly ill and died two days short of his 40th birthday. It is speculated that he tested a drug on himself, thus died of poison. His son Charles wrote his biography. He is most known for his work on reforming the notation for chemical formulas from 1843 to 1846, researching acid anhydrides, and treated the medicine sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride to make acetylsalicylic acid, or Aspirin, for the first time. For fifty years, other chemists attempted to refine his product, yet it was not until 1897 that Bayer, a German pharmaceutical company, produced Aspirin for marketing.