Franz Karl AchardBorn 28 Apr 1753; died 20 Apr 1821 at age 67. German chemist and experimental physicist who invented a process for the large-scale extraction of table sugar (sucrose) from beets, and in 1801, opened the first sugar-beet factory, in Silesia (now Poland). At first, though simple, the method was costly, He improved it using suggestions of the Institute in France, including that the beets be pressed without cooking them, which saved much expense for fuel. He had succeeded Andreas Sigismund Marggraf upon his death (1782) as director of the “Class of Physics” at the Berlin Academy. It was Marggraf that had first discovered the presence of sugar in beet-root, and isolated it on an experimental scale in 1747. Achard also discovered a method for working platinum and was the first to prepare a platinum crucible (1784). |
