Nicolae Teclu Nicolae Teclu was born in Brasov

Nicolae Teclu

Nicolae Teclu was born in Brasov. He studied at the primary and secondary schools in Brasov and then he went to Vienne to finish the high school. Here, he attended the classes of the Poitechnical Institute where he studied Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry. After that, he attended Art Academy in Munchen, graduating Architecture in 1864.

After graduating college, he works in a paper factory in Schlogemuhl, a period when he made a lot of research in Chemistry, in the end deciding to build a paper factory in his native country, Romania. Therefore, in 1868 he returned in Brasov in order to build the factory but unfortunately he didn’t get any support so he started to work as a Chemistry teacher at Andrei Saguna High School. After 4 years of teaching he returned to Vienne working as a lecturer at the Chemistry College replacing his own teacher Ludwig Boltzman. Then he was also a teacher at the Trade Academy ending his career as a chemist at the State Money Bank in Austria.

Nicolae Teclu was a tireless researcher, becoming famous all over the world by the 60 discoveries and 52 works on Chemistry. He studied papers on mineral pigments, oils used in paint, paper and fiber light resistance, gas combustion, and composition analysis of a meteorite found in India. He discovered a revolutionary method at that time to read even a scorched paper using the solution of glycerine water used by Nicolae Teclu to identify Austrian money burned in a fire in Belgium and also by reading some burned documents helping Polish authorities to prove the murder of a prominent lawyer in Krakow. His major concern in research was the “burning phenomenon" that drew his attention throughout his. In 1900 he invented the light bulb Laboratory making it adjustable of the airflow and gas. This bulb bears the name "Teclu burner. " The burner was patented and manufactured in Vienna and is still used today in all chemistry laboratories all over the world.

Nicolae Teclu also realized apparatus for making solid carbon dioxide to decompose water, to record gas explosion, to determine the composition of air in the mine, for the preparation of ozone. The photometer discovered by Teclu is used in medicine today in the analytical laboratories. At Bucharest in “Teclu “laboratory at the University there is an important collection with devices made by this great Romanian scientist. He was a very famous Romanian chemist known the entire world, and to pay him respect a lot of high schools in Romania bear his name.