Michel Chevreuil

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Michel Eugène Chevreuil was a noted French chemist of the 19th century. He was one of the earliest practitioners of organic chemistry with his work on fats, soaps, and fatty acids.

Around 1816, Chevreuil started a study of soaps made from various fats and alkali. He separated the different acids that, in combination with the alkali produced the soap, and recognized that these were all individual compounds, thereby demonstrating that it was possible to make a chemical change—without the necessity for living processes— in fats which came from an organic source.