LUDWIG

See also:

• LUDWIG MOND (1839-1909)

MOND (1839-1909)  , British chemist, was born at Cassel in Germany on the 7th of March 1839 . After studying MONDOVI 693 at Marburg under Hermann Kolbe and at Heidelberg under Robert Bunsen, he came to England in 1862 and obtained a position in a chemical works at Widnes, where he elaborated the practical application of a method he had devised for recovering the sulphur lost as calcium sulphide in the black ash waste of the Leblanc alkali process . He became a 'naturalized British subject in 1867 . In 1873 he entered into partnership with Sir John Tomlinson Brunner (b . 1842– ),whom he had met when he was at Widnes, and thus founded the great chemical manufacturing firm of Brunner, Mond & Co . They began to make alkali by the ammonia-soda process, under licence from the Belgian chemist, Ernest Solvay, but at first the venture threatened to prove a failure . Gradually, however, the technical difficulties were overcome and success assured, largely as a result of improved methods worked out by Mond for the recovery of the ammonia . About 1879 he began experiments in the economical utilization of fuel, and his efforts led him to the system of making producer-gas, known by his name (see Gas: II . For Fuel and Power) . Later, while attempting to utilize the gas for the production of electricity by means of a Grove gas battery, he noticed that the carbon monoxide contained in it combined with nickel . The resulting compound, nickel carbonyl, which was described to the Chemical Society in 189o, is both formed and decomposed within a very moderate range of temperature, and on this fact he based a successful process for the extraction of nickel from its ores . A liberal contributor to the purposes of scientific research, Mond founded in 1896 the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory in connexion with the Royal Institution .

On his

death, which occurred in London on the 11th of December 1909, he bequeathed ,a large part of his collection of pictures to the nation .