Alfred Naquet

Born in Carpentras in 1834, Alfred Joseph Naquet was a French chemist and politician. He taught chemistry in Paris and at Palermo, and he also wrote scientific works, including books that helped spread modern chemical ideas to a wider readership.

Naquet was an outspoken republican opponent of the Second Empire, and his political activism led to imprisonment and periods of exile. After the fall of the Empire, he served in French public life as a deputy and later as a senator, building a reputation as a forceful and often controversial speaker.

He is most closely linked with the law of 1884 that re-established divorce in France, widely known as the Naquet Law. That reform made his name especially well known beyond science, and it explains why he is remembered both as a man of chemistry and as a determined political reformer.