Ernest Solvay

Ernest Gaston Joseph Solvay (Rebecq, Belgium, April 16, 1838-Ixelles, May 26, 1922) was a Belgian industrial chemist, philanthropist and politician. He developed a new procedure for the manufacture of sodium carbonate by treating a saturated solution of common salt with carbon dioxide and ammonia.

His last name gave his name to the Solvay process, to the Solvay tower (both processes in industrial chemistry) and to the Solvay conferences, which are still organized today and which at the beginning of the century XX brought together the most important physics figures of the time.

Trajectory

Solvay was born on April 16, 1838 in Rebecq-Rognon, in the province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium.

Illness prevented him from going to university, so he acquired basic training in local schools, and working with his father in the salt production business, but only when he started working in his uncle's factory, at the age of 21, in the chemical industry, when he devised various methods of gas purification. He is best known for the development of the Solvay process, a method for the production of soda ash that improved and superseded the existing Leblanc method, and for the invention of the Solvay carbonating tower (in which a solution of ammonia salt could be mixed with carbon dioxide). He acquired his first patent for the production of soda in 1861.

In 1863, he built his first factory in Couillet, where he finished perfecting his method, which he patented in 1872. It came from the Solvay process. Today, about 70 factories that use it are still operating. Soda is an essential component in many industrial applications such as glass manufacturing, metallurgy and detergent manufacturing.

This success brought Solvay considerable wealth, which he used for various philanthropic purposes, including the founding of several international scientific research institutes in physiology (1893), sociology (University of Brussels, 1902), physics (1912) and chemistry (1913). Solvay's physics lectures were particularly renowned for his role in developing theories of quantum mechanics and atomic structure. At the same time, he took social initiatives, as he was a precursor to the recognition of labor rights in his industries, where he started a non-existent social security system at the time: a pension for workers, since 1899, limitations on work hours and working hours. 8 hours since 1908, the establishment of paid vacations since 1913 and a kind of professional recycling.

Solvay physics conference of 1911. Ernest Solvay is the third sitting on the left.

He designed the contours of a social structure founded on the organization of the labor market, equal opportunities and the regulatory involvement of the State. A committed liberal politician, he was twice elected senator and, in 1918, minister of state.

In 1911 he was the promoter of an important scientific conference, the so-called Solvay Congress, where some of the most important physicists of the time attended, such as Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford, Max Planck or Marie Curie, among others, introducers of the radiation, quantum mechanics and the atomic model. After the success of this first conference, others were held every three years, attended by other important scientists such as Niels Bohr or Werner Heisenberg, among many others. The most important conference of all was the fifth, held in 1927 in Brussels.

Solvay died in 1922 in Ixelles, Brussels-Capital Region.

Awards and recognitions

• 1918: Minister of State, by Royal Decree.
• Grand Cord of the Order of Leopoldo, by Royal Decree. November 21, 1918
• Great Cord of the Legion of Honor, France, November 7, 1919