Franz Karl Achard develops a practical method for extracting sugar from beets in 1787.

A student o the late German chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf, who had earlier discovered that the sucrose in beets has the same chemical composition as that in sugarcane, Achard had revived the discovery by Marggraf in 1747 that sugar beets contained sugar, and devised a process to produce it.

Born in Berlin, the son of preacher Max Guillaume Achard, descendant of Huguenot refugees and his wife Marguerite Elisabeth (Rouppert), Achard had studied physics and chemistry in his home city and became interested in sugar refining through his stepfather.

At the age of twenty, Achard had entered the "Circle of Friends of Natural Sciences" and met Marggraf, then director of the physical classes at the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Achard has studied many subjects, including meteorology, evaporation chillness, electricity, telegraphy, gravity, lightning arresters, and published in German and French.

A favorite of King Frederick II of Prussia, Achard had reported directlyto the King on his research twice a week.

About a study on the influence of electricity on mental capabilities, Frederick II was reported to have said: If he is able to provide reason for the half wits in my Prussian states using electricity, then he is worth more than his own weight in gold.

Elected to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin in 1776, Archard went on to become the director of the physical classes of the academy following the death of Marggraf in 1782.

In 1782 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

For his discoveries in the acclimatization of tobacco to Germany, the king had granted him a lifetime pension of five hundred taler.

Achard is also esteemed by Frederick William II of Prussia.