Georges Friedel (19 July 1865 – 11 December 1933) was a French mineralogist and crystallographer.
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Life
Georges was the son of the chemist Charles Friedel. Georges' grandfather was Louis Georges Duvernoy who held the chair in comparative anatomy from 1850 to 1855 at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.
Georges studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris and the École Nationale des Mines in St. Etienne, and was a student of François Ernest Mallard. In 1893 he obtained a professorship at the École Nationale des Mines, of which he would later become the director. After the First World War, he returned as a professor to the University of Strasbourg in Alsace. Due to ill health, he took early retirement in 1930, and died in 1933. He was married with five children.
Scientific works
Like his teacher Mallard, Friedel concerned himself with the theories of Auguste Bravais, the founder of crystallography. Friedel was able to demonstrate the theoretical ideas of Bravais (the Bravais lattice) with the help of X-ray diffraction experiments on crystals, and so provide the physical basis for these ideas. One of his most important discoveries was the law that now bears his name.