Félix Pisani


Félix Pisani was a French chemist and mineralogist.
He was born in Istanbul, where his Venetian father worked in the Russian diplomatic service. Beginning in 1854, he studied chemistry in Paris at a private school run by Charles Frédéric Gerhardt.
Best known as a dealer in minerals and other geological materials, Pisani maintained a private laboratory on the Rue de Furstenberg in Paris, from where he conducted private lectures and performed consultant work. His laboratory was a popular meeting place of local mineralogists until the creation of the Société minéralogique de France in 1878, of which Pisani was a founding member.
His primary written work was Traité élémentaire de minéralogie, first published in 1875. In 1860, the mineral pisanite was named in his honor by Gustav Adolph Kenngott.