MOND, LUDWIG

born March 7, 1839, Kassel, Hesse-Kassel died Dec. 11, 1909, London, Eng. German-born British chemist and industrialist who improved the Solvay alkali process and devised a process for the extraction of nickel. The son of a wealthy Jewish family, Mond studied chemistry at Marburg and Heidelberg, entered the chemical industry, and went to England in 1862. There his method for recovering sulfur from the by-products of the Leblanc alkali process was a commercial success. In 1873 he and John Tomlinson Brunner founded the important chemical-manufacturing firm of Brunner, Mond and Company. They began on a large scale to make soda ash (sodium carbonate) by the newly developed Solvay process, a process that was significantly improved by Mond. In attempting to find ways of obtaining ammonia from coal and coke, Mond also invented a system for making a cheap producer gas that became useful for industrial heating purposes. His discovery of nickel carbonyl made possible a successful process for the extraction of nickel from its ores. Mond founded the Mond Nickel Company to link nickel mines in Canada with refining works in Wales that utilized his new discovery. Mond became a naturalized British subject in 1880 and was elected to the Royal Society in 1891. A notable art collector, he bequeathed an important group of Italian paintings to the National Gallery, London.