1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Achard, Franz Carl

ACHARD, FRANZ CARL (1753–1821), Prussian chemist, was born at Berlin on the 28th of April 1753, and died at Kunern, in Silesia, on the 20th of April 1821. He was a pioneer in turning to practical account A. S. Marggraf’s discovery of the presence of sugar in beetroot, and by the end of the 18th century he was producing considerable quantities of beet-sugar, though by a very imperfect process, at Kunern, on an estate which was granted him about 1800 by the king of Prussia. There too he carried on a school of instruction in sugar-manufacture, which had an international reputation. For a time he was director of the physics class of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and he published several volumes of chemical and physical researches, discovering among other things a method of working platinum.