The Rum Biography Title
The Rum Biography Introduction
Featured Biography: Charles Cagniard de la Tour
Charles Cagniard de la Tour was born in Paris, France, on March 31, 1777. He studied at the École Polytechnique and the Écoledu Génie Géographe. He was later auditor to the Council of
NO kown portrair for Charles Cagniard
State, director of special projects for the city of Paris, and a member of the board of directors of the Société d’ Encouragement. His honors included membership in the Legion of Honor and Knighthood of the Order of St. Michel.
Charles Cagniard had interests and proficiency in numerous fields of study, resulting in many and varied contributions to humanity.
His earliest efforts produced results in 1809, in the field of mechanics, in the form of anew heat engine. Between 1809 and 1815 he also produced a new hydraulic engine, a new air pump, a waterwheel mounted horizontally and turned by the current of a river, a portable military mill, and a heat-driven winch. Cagniard kept improving these designs until 1819; he added a curved-cylinder pump to the list in 1820.
Cagniard began research in acoustics and the mechanism of voice production and devoted much effort to this field from then on. Between 1828 and 1831 new interests appeared: studies on the crystallization and the effect of acids on carbon; studies on phosphorus; and studies on silica and its crystallization and the hardening of mortar. Between 1832 and 1835 Cagniard worked on adapting the principle of the Archimedean screw to the function of an air pump and then began research on alcoholic fermentation; this work reached its culmination between 1836 and 1838.
Supercritical Fluids
Cagniard’s studies on alcoholic fermentation have unquestionably remained the most valuable of his works. Begun as early as 1835, they led him, toward the end of 1836, to see that there was certainly a living substance in brewer’s yeast. Schwann came to the same conclusion at the same time, but the vocal criticism from Justus von Liebig (a contemporary German chemist, considered as one of the founders of organic chemistry) forced this point of view into the background for twenty years until 1857, when Pasteur publicized his -now famous- findings.
Reporting on research done with the finest microscopes available then, Cagniard wrote that “Ferments... are composed of very simple organized microscopic bodies... brewer’s yeast is a mass of small globulous bodies capable of reproducing themselves... it is very probably through some effect of their growth that they release carbon dioxide and... convert [a sugary solution] into a spirituous liquor.”
