Part 2. Cryoscopy

As a professor at the University of Grenoble, Francois-Marie Raoult formulated many of the basic laws of physical chemistry. One of these laws provides a definition for so-called ‘ideal solutions’; another one has a much broader content than was at first thought. It is the ‘cryoscopic’ law, which was so named by Raoult himself, from the Greek words χρνος (ice) and σκοπeω (I observe)64. Chemists, however, just saw in it one of the methods of determination of molar masses. It was only when van’t Hoff84 gave an expression for the solvent cryoscopic constant that Raoult’s experimental work gained universal acceptance.