Madame d'Orbelin

Madame d'Orbelin was a chemist from Vienna who claimed to have discovered a technique to render mercury into a solid at room temperature in the 18th century.[1] Referred to as "The Alchemiste" by Benjamin Franklin, d'Orberlin is a late example of an amateur scientist whose work straddled alchemy ("fixing mercury") and the 18th-century "chemical revolution".[2][3]

D'Orbelin wrote to Benjamin Franklin three times in 1785, and evidently demonstrated her technique to him in Paris on 26 March of that year.[3] She subsequently reported that she had published her results, and asked Franklin for a small loan.[3] Although none of d'Orbelin's published works are known to have survived, the American Philosophical Society's Franklin archive does include undated instructions, written in French and in another's handwriting, for an experiment involving antimony and saltpeter.[3][2]

Her claim was well-enough known that her discovery of "malleable mercury" was published as fact by a number of sources in subsequent decades, including by Thomas Tegg (1835) and George Palmer Putnam (1851).[4][1][2]

In 2026, German artist Anselm Kiefer included a painting of d'Orbelin in his collection, The Women Alchemists, which was displayed in Milan's Sala delle Cariatidi as part of the cultural showcase of the 2026 Winter Olympics.[5][6]

References

  1. ^ a b Putnam, George Palmer, ed. (1851). "Mercury". The World's Progress: a Dictionary of Dates. With Tabular Views of General History, and a Historical Chart. Putnam. p. 421.
  2. ^ a b c Fabbri, Natacha (2026). Women Alchemists: Biographical Notes from the Catalogue. Milan: Palazzo Reale. p. 11.
  3. ^ a b c d Franklin, Benjamin (2 January 2024). The Papers of Benjamin Franklin: March 16 through September 13, 1785. Yale University Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 978-0-300-26795-2.
  4. ^ Tegg, Thomas (1835). A Dictionary of Chronology ... Fourth edition [of "Chronology, or the Historian's Companion"], considerably enlarged. p. 241.
  5. ^ Wullschläger, Jackie (7 February 2026). "Anselm Kiefer, master of spectacle, on the lost women of history". Financial Times. Retrieved 8 February 2026.
  6. ^ "Kiefer. The Women Alchemists". Marsilio Arte (in Italian). Retrieved 8 February 2026.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.