Antal Ruprecht

* Szomolnok, 14 November 1748 – † Vienna, 6 October 1814 / chemist, metallurgical engineer ; ; Between 1772 and 1775 he studied as a scholarship holder at the Mining Academy in Bánya Selmec, and then during his study trip abroad he also went to Stockholm, where he studied with Professor Torbern Bergman (1735–1784). Upon his return, in 1779 he was appointed professor at the Department of Chemistry and Metallurgy of the Mining Academy in Bánya Selmec, replacing Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (Bánya Selmec), who had left for the University of Pavia. In 1792 he was transferred to Vienna, where he became the director of the mining and metallurgical affairs of the empire. His scientific work is divided into two major periods: between 1782 and 1785 he mainly dealt with the examination of Transylvanian ores, during which time he had a professional debate with Ferenc Müller, the discoverer of tellurium, about the identification of the unknown element [sometimes he thought it was bismuth, sometimes antimony, while in 1796 Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743–1817) proved that Müller's metallicum problematicum was actually tellurium], after 1785 he began his reduction experiments with the metallization of earths, after he realized that the "earths" were actually metal oxides. Although he failed to produce elemental magnesium, calcium and barium with the carbon used for the reduction, he suspected that they were previously unknown elements and even gave them names (borbonium – Ba, parthenum – Ca, autrium – Mg), but these were finally produced by the English chemist Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) through electrolysis and thus we must consider him as their discoverer. He introduced and further developed the amalgamation precious metal extraction process of Ignác Born (Szklenófürdő). He was the first in our country to use the notation of chemical processes in education (1781). His dissertations were mostly published in Crell Chemische Annalen. He did not write a separate book, his students compiled a thick notebook based on his lectures. This shows that although he taught it, he broke with the phlogiston theory and devoted a great deal of space to Lavoisier's (1743–1794) explanation of combustion.