Marcellin Berthelot

Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot was a French chemist and Republican politician noted for the Thomsen–Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. Berthelot was convinced that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized foods would replace farms and pastures. "Why not", he asked, "if it proved cheaper and better to make the same materials than to grow them?"

25 October 1827

Born on the same birth day (25 October): Anton Kochinyan • Bob Webster • Camillo Sivori • Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein • Hong Sang-soo • Kornelia Ender • Louis II, Count of Flanders • Oskar Kallas • Phil Volk • Sergey Ridzik • Simon Charlton • Theodora Agnes Peck • Zana Briski

Born in the same month (October 1827): Afzal-ud-Daulah