Hippolyte-Victor Collet-Descotils

Hippolyte-Victor Collet-Descotils (21 November 1773 in Caen – 6 December 1815 in Paris) was a French chemist. He studied in the École des Mines de Paris, and was a student and friend of Louis Nicolas Vauquelin.

Hippolyte-Victor Collet-Descotils
Hippolyte-Victor Collet-Descotils
Born	(1773-11-21)21 November 1773 Caen, France
Died	6 December 1815(1815-12-06) (aged 42) Paris, France
Alma mater	École des Mines de Paris

He is best known for confirming the discovery of chromium by Vauquelin, and for independently discovering iridium in 1803.^[1]

In 1806, Collet-Descotils misidentified erythronium, a new element discovered in Mexico by Andrés Manuel del Río, thinking that it was chromium. This resulted in Alexander von Humboldt rejecting Del Río's discovery.^[2] The same element was rediscovered thirty years later in Sweden and renamed as vanadium.

In 1815, a few months before his death, he got the position of director of École des Mines de Paris, in charge of transferring the school to a new building. He is buried in the 10th Division of the Père Lachaise Cemetery of Paris.^[3]