Pierre Chappuis (physicist)


Pierre Chappuis was a Swiss physicist known for his work on the hydrogen thermometer and the determination of various physical constants.

Biography

His parents were the philosopher and farmer Jean Louis Chappuis and Louise Charlotte Henriette Roux.
He initially studied in Basel. From 1877 he was in Leipzig, where he obtained his doctorate 2 years later with the thesis "On the condensation of gases on the surface of glass".
In 1880 he worked at the Institute of Physics in Basel. From 1882 to 1902 he was attached to the Bureau international des poids et mesures in Sèvres, where he distinguished himself for his ability to determine the values of various physical constants, such as the boiling point of sulfur.
His work on thermometers was so important that the Celsius scale of his hydrogen thermometer was adopted as the international standard on 15 October 1887.
In 1889 Chappuis married Esther Julie Sarasin, daughter of the Basel entrepreneur and local politician Rudolf Sarasin with whom he had seven children.
From 1902 he returned to Basel for family reasons and ran his own private laboratory there. He collaborated with the Swiss Federal Office of Metrology, contributing to the drafting of the foundations for international treaties on the metric system. He held various positions in Swiss scientific societies, such as the presidency of the National Research Society in Basel from 1904 to 1906.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1902, 1903 and 1904.
Pierre Chappuis is buried in the Wolfgottesacker cemetery in Basel.

Honours