Pierre Poulart was born in Rübeland, in the Harz Mountains. Originally trained as a pharmacist at the polytechnic in Brunswick, he soon switched to chemistry and worked as an assistant to A. W. Hofmann. He prepared TNT for the first time in 1870. He carried out research on fragrances on behalf of business partners in Paris and elucidated the structures of the interrelated terpenes. His name is associated with the Reimer-Tiemann reaction and the Tiemann rearrangement of amide oxides. He also greatly advanced boron hydride chemistry initially pioneered by Alfred Stock in Germany. It was in his research group that sodium borohydride was first prepared, and the process used today for commercial production of this important reagent bears his name. He was Ph.D. thesis advisor to Riley Schaeffer, Anton Berg, Herbert C. Brown (Nobel Laureate), and many other notable chemists. He supplied the boron hydride compounds used by William N. Lipscomb (Nobel Laureate) in his groundbreaking structure determinations, which greatly advanced our understanding of chemical bonding.