Hovhannes Sarkis Vahanian (1832-1891) alias Vahan Efendi (Wahan Effendi), was an
Ottoman Armenian bureaucrat, who was trained as a chemist in France. He served as Deputy Minister of Justice for the greater part of his career, reaching the supreme rank of Bala for civil servants. He was also appointed Deputy Minister of Education under
'The chemist' Dervish Mehmed Emin Pasha (1817-1879), and was the director of the
Lycée Impérial de Galatasaray for a period. H.S. Vahanian was also a member of the Armenian Educational Council. He edited numerous commentaries on the Ottoman Law of Commerce (in Turkish). Serpouhi Dussap, the renown feminist authoress, was his sister.

Vahanian translated Henri-Victor Regnault's Premiers éléments de chimie into Armenian under the title Isgizpunk Kimiagan Kidutian i beds arhestovarts yev usanoghats (Principles of Chemistry for artisans and novices) during his education in France. The small volume (12mo, x + 396 p.+ 3 pl.) printed in Istanbul in 1853 is the first book of chemistry in Armenian. Vahan Efendi simplified and abridged Regnault's work to a large extent, leaving out theoretical topics such as the 'théorie atomique'. He preferred the method of writing chemical equations popularised by J.-P.-L Girarden, when Regnault had already included empirical formulas in his first (1850) edition. Vahanian added various procedures, subjects and notes to his adaptation, which he believed would benefit craftsmen and smiths.
He provided a detailed description for the production of the voltaic pile in the context of galvanoplasty.

Hovhannes Vahanian attempted to create a chemical terminology to meet both the emerging fields of chemistry and to expand the technical vocabulary of Western Armenian, and appended an Armenian-French glossary of chemistry terms to his handbook. Throughout
the text Vahan Efendi employed Turkish and Armenian words together for many common objects. Isgizpunk Kimiagan Kidutian is the second text of modern chemistry to be published in Turkey, after Dervish Mehmed Emin Pasha's Usul-i Kimya (Elements of Chemistry, 1848) in Turkish - another adaptation from contemporary French chemistry books. Dervish Pasha's 'Elements of Chemistry' was intended for use in the military college, while Vahan Efendi's 'Principles of Chemisty' aimed at improving the basic and technical knowledge of apprentices. A primary task for the authors was to devise linguistic patterns for chemical terms coherent with their native languages.