French chemist who criticized the radical theory of chemical structure proposed by Berzelius. He did not believe in the reality of atoms and wanted to remove the word "atom" from the chemical vocabulary. He was charged by the French king to discover why chlorine-bleached candles had burned with acrid black smoke in the king's 1833 soireé. He passed on the responsibility to his student Laurent when it appeared that the only explanation would violate the theory of electronegativity. Dumas invented the type theory of organic structure, and developed a method for determining the nitrogen content of organic compounds. Also, like Jean Prévost, he performed experiments with frogs' eggs and showed that sperm were necessary for fertilization. He also discovered a method for determining atomic weights for substances which were liquid or solid at room temperature using vaporization.

Berzelius, Beguyer de Chancourtois, Laurent, Mendeléev, Newlands, Prévost (Jean)