and German manufacturers. Ernest Fourneau joined as a researcher. He was a pupil of Friedel and Moureu who had studied in the German laboratories of Ludwig Gattermann in Heidelberg, Hermann Emil Fischer in Berlin and Richard Willstätter in Munich. In 1903, Ernest Fourneau took over the management of a newly created pharmaceutical research department whose laboratories were located in Ivry. He headed the research laboratory in Ivry-sur-Seine from 1903 to 1911. One of the products was a synthetic local anesthetic that was named "Stovaine" (Amylocaine). This was a pun on the English translation of "fourneau" as "stove". At the end of 1903 Fourneau and Poulenc frères filed the patents for stovaïne, the first commercially exploitable synthetic local anesthetic which remained in use until the 1940s. Other important medicines were antipyretics. In 1910 Fourneau accepted the directorship of the Pasteur Institute's therapeutic chemistry section, with the condition that he maintained his ties with Poulenc Frères. The relationship with the Paris-based Pasteur Institute, a leading medical research center, gave the company a valuable advantage. A new plant was built in Vitry-sur-Seine in 1907. The company transferred its factories there from Ivry. By 1913 the company had 480 employees. There were eleven pharmacists, five civil engineers and nineteen chemists. The Poulenc brothers became interested in the research into catalytic hydrogenation being undertaken by Paul Sabatier and Jean-Baptiste Senderens in Toulouse. In 1913 they invited the Abbé Senderens to move to Vitry. The company developed and manufactured new organic and mineral products. Research by Fourneau and Francis Billon gave Poulenc Frères the ability to copy German synthetic drugs before 1914, although at first their versions of these drugs were not profitable. The outbreak of World War I (1914–18) brought new business to most French chemical companies, including Poulenc Frères. The government gave the company contracts to produce poison gas and antidotes for poison gas. It started producing German products that could no longer be obtained in France and England, including the syphilis treatments salvarsan (arsphenamine) and neo-salvarsan. Between 1914 and 1916 the workforce grew from 500 to 2,000 and sales from 15.7 million francs to nearly 36 million francs. Poulenc Frères had made an agreement in 1909 by which the British firm May & Baker could license Poulenc's patents, which took effect in 1916. May & Baker opened a new research laboratory for chemotherapeutic products in Wandsworth. The company managed to weather the industrial