Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac[a] (6 December 1778 – 9 May 1850) was a French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for his discovery that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen by volume (with Alexander von Humboldt), for two laws related to gases, and for his work on alcohol–water mixtures, which led to the degrees Gay-Lussac used to measure alcoholic beverages in many countries.

Gay-Lussac was born at Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat in the present-day department of Haute-Vienne.[5]
His father, Anthony Gay, son of a doctor, was a lawyer and prosecutor and worked as a judge in Noblat Bridge.[6] Father of two sons and three daughters, he owned much of the Lussac village and began to add the name of this hamlet to his name, following a custom of the Ancien Régime. Towards the year 1803, father and son formally adopted the name Gay-Lussac.[7] During the Revolution, under the Law of Suspects, his father, former king's attorney, was imprisoned in Saint Léonard from 1793 to 1794.
Gay-Lussac received his early education at the hands of the Catholic Abbey of Bourdeix.[8] In the care of the Abbot of Dumonteil, he began his education in Paris, finally entering the École Polytechnique in 1798.
Three years later, Gay-Lussac transferred to the École des Ponts et Chaussées, and shortly afterward was assigned to C. L. Berthollet as his assistant. In 1804 he was appointed répétiteur (demonstrator) to Antoine François Fourcroy at the École Polytechnique, whom he succeeded in 1809 as professor of chemistry. From 1809 to 1832, he was also the professor of physics at the Sorbonne, a post which he only resigned for the chair of chemistry at the Jardin des Plantes. In 1821, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1831 he was elected to represent Haute-Vienne in the chamber of deputies, and in 1839 he entered the chamber of peers. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1832.[9]
ゲイ=リュサックは1809年にジュヌヴィエーヴ=マリー=ジョゼフ・ロジョと結婚した。二人は、彼女が麻布店の店員として働いていた時に初めて出会った。カウンターの下で化学の教科書を読んでいた彼女に気づき、それがきっかけで知り合った。夫妻には5人の子供がおり、長男のジュールはギーセンでユストゥス・リービッヒに師事した。ジュールの著作の中には、名前の頭文字が同じ(J. Gay-Lussac)ため、今日では父親の著作と間違われるものもある。
ゲイ=リュサックは、化学と物理学の両分野における数々の発見によって、当時ヨーロッパで最も偉大な科学者の一人として名声を博した。王政復古によりフランス貴族に叙せられたが、政治的には反聖職者派と協力関係にあった。フランソワ・アラゴとは親しい間柄だった。
ゲイ=リュサックはパリで亡くなり、彼の墓はペール・ラシェーズ墓地にある。彼の名前は、エッフェル塔に刻まれた72人の名前の一つである。



