Ernest Gaston Joseph Solvay (French: [sɔlvɛ]; April 16, 1838 – May 26, 1922) was a Belgian chemist, industrialist, and philanthropist.
Biography
Born in Rebecq, he was unable to attend university because of a serious illness called pleurisy. He began working in his uncle’s chemical factory when he was 21 years old.
In 1861, he and his brother Alfred Solvay created the ammonia-soda process (also called the Solvay process) to make soda ash (a type of salt called anhydrous sodium carbonate) using brine (a source of sodium chloride) and limestone (a source of calcium carbonate). This method improved upon a previous process known as the Leblanc process. Because of his friendship with François Hoebeke, who owned a bottling company called Top Bronnen in Nederbrakel, he helped develop the first carbonated non-alcoholic drinks in Belgium.
He started the company Solvay & Cie and built his first factory in Couillet (now part of Charleroi, Belgium) in 1863. He continued to improve the process until 1872, when he received a patent for it. Soon after, Solvay process plants were built in the United Kingdom, the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and Austria. Today, about 70 Solvay process plants are still in use around the world.
The profits from his patents allowed Solvay to support many charitable efforts. In 1894, he helped create the "Institut des Sciences Sociales" (ISS) or Institute for Sociology at the Free University of Brussels (now divided into the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel). He also helped establish International Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. In 1903, he founded the Solvay Business School, which is part of the Free University of Brussels. In 1911, he started a series of important physics conferences called the Solvay Conferences. Scientists who attended included Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Henri Poincaré, and Albert Einstein (who was 32 years old at the time). A later conference included Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Erwin Schrödinger.
He was elected twice to the Belgian Senate as a member of the Liberal Party and was given the honorary title of Minister of State later in his life. Places named after him include Solvay, New York, and Rosignano Solvay, which are where the first Solvay process plants were built in the United States and Italy.
Solvay died in Ixelles at the age of 84 and is buried in Ixelles Cemetery.
Honours
- 1918: Appointed as Minister of State through a royal decree.
- Received the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold through a royal decree on November 21, 1918.
- Received the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour in France on November 7, 1919.
Literature
- Bertrand, Louis, Ernest Solvay. A Reformer in Societal Matters, Brussels, Agence Dechenne, 1918, 113 pages.
- Boianovsky, Mauro, Erreygers, Guido, Social comptabilism and pure credit systems. Solvay and Wicksell on monetary reform, in: Fontaine, Philippe, Leonard, Robert, (eds.), The experiment in the history of economics, London, Routledge, 2005, pp. 98–134.
- Despy-Meyer, Andrée, Devriese Didier (eds.), Ernest Solvay and His Time, Brussels, Archives de l'ULB, 1997, 349 pages.
- Erreygers, Guido, The economic theories and social reform proposals of Ernest Solvay (1838–1922), in: Samuels, Warren J. (ed.), European economists of the early 20th century, volume 1. Studies of neglected thinkers of Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Scandinavia, Cheltenham-Northampton, Edward Elgar, 1998, pp. 221–262.
- Rapaille, Maxime, Solvay, a Giant. From the Shores of the Sambre to the Farthest Reaches of the Earth, Brussels, Didier Hatier, 1989, 187 pages.
- Author not stated. "The Life of Ernest Solvay," Brussels, Chez le Libraire Lamertin, 1929, 164 pages. Soft cover. Notation at front reads "The main works of Ernest Solvay on scientific, political, and social issues will be published in two volumes, of the same format as this one, by Lamertin, at the end of 1929, under the title: Notes, Letters, and Speeches of Ernest Solvay."