1652-1715

French chemist who introduced the new experimental chemistry to the Académie des Sciences. In Essais de chimie (1702-10) he concluded that salt, sulfur, and mercury were not present in all substances—an important move toward the modern concept of an element. Homberg's emphasis on analyzing substances into simple, stable chemical entities paved the way for eighteenth-century analytical chemistry, and his work on acid-alkali neutralization was essential for later work on the nature of salts.