2-705-881 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Chaptal. Late Professor of Chemistry at Montpellier', 19th century. Portrait of French politician and chemist Jean Antoine Chaptal (1756-1832). Chaptal wrote on technical chemistry and made a major contribution to the modern scientific chemical industry and the introduction of the metric system of weights and measures. In 1815, during his time as Minister of Interior, under Napoleon I, he supported the concept of increasing the strength of wine by adding sugar before fermentation and this process became known as 'chaptalisation'.