Bernard Courtois was born in Dijon, France. Exposed to chemistry at an early age, he divided his time between the saltpeter (potassium nitrate) works of his father, Jean- Baptiste Courtois, and the laboratory at the Dijon Academy. In 1791, he became an apprentice for three years to a pharmacist at Auxerre. Courtois was admitted to the famous engineering school in Paris, the École Polytechnique, where he studied under the chemist Antoine François, Comte de Fourcroy.

In 1799, Courtois was drafted in the French military and served as a pharmacist. He then became assistant to chemist Louis Jacques Thénard (1801) and assistant to chemist Armand Seguin (1804). Courtois returned to Dijon to take over his father's business. In 1808, he married a young, nearly-illiterate peasant girl, Madeleine Eulalie Morand.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the British naval blockade cut off foreign imports of saltpeter needed to prepare gunpowder. Courtois used...