Wilhelm Homberg

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Wilhelm Homberg (1652–1715) was a German natural philosopher, also known as Guillaume Homberg in French. He was born in Batavia (now Jakarta) while his father served in the Dutch East India Company. His father, John Homberg, was a Saxon gentleman who lost his inheritance during the Thirty Years’ War. The family returned to Europe in 1670. Homberg studied law at Jena and Leipzig and became an advocate in Magdeburg in 1674. There he met Otto von Guericke, who guided him toward natural science. He traveled around Europe to study, earned a medical degree at Wittenberg, and settled in Paris in 1682. He worked as a physician in Rome from 1685 to 1690, then returned to Paris in 1691. He was elected to the Academy of Sciences and named director of communication in 1697. He later taught physics and chemistry (1702) and served as private physician to the Duke of Orleans (1705). He died in Paris in 1715.

Homberg lived during the shift from alchemy to chemistry. Before 1700 he studied air pressure and vacuums, using an improved air pump he designed. He did some alchemy but also made lasting contributions to chemistry and physics, including observations on the preparation of Kunkel’s phosphorus, the green color seen in copper flames, the crystallization of common salt, salts of plants, how bases are saturated by acids, and the freezing and evaporation of water in vacuum. Much of his work was published in the Recueil de l’Académie des Sciences from 1692 to 1714. He is thought to be the first to propose distillation at reduced pressure to prevent thermal decomposition. He discovered boracic acid in 1702, calling it Sal Sedativum Hombergi. “Homberg’s phosphorus” is prepared by fusing sal ammoniac with quick lime.