Page:Biographies of Scientific Men.djvu/190

 1827-1907

N 1827 the Government of Charles X. sent a fleet to the coast of Morea to join the English in putting a stop to the barbarous warfare between the Greeks and the Turks. De Rigny and Codrington, the two admirals, acted in concert in a battle fought in the Bay of Navarino, in which the Turkish fleet was destroyed. It will be remembered that Lord Byron, the poet, fought in this battle, and had the great pleasure of seeing Greece made an independent state. In the same year Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot was born on 25th October 1827, at Paris, and for half a century was a most famous chemist, writer, and philosopher. He was the son of a distinguished physician, Dr Jacques Martin Berthelot, and received his education at the Lycée Henri IV. In early life he won an important prize at an open competition for philosophy, and then devoted himself to scientific studies, beginning with investigations on acids and fermentation. In 1851, at the age of twenty-four, he entered the Collège de France, as préparateur of the lectures on chemistry 146