Traité élémentaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry) (1789)
Founding textbook of modern chemistry, with a list of simple substances (elements), including light and caloric
Science · Chemistry
Antoine Lavoisier
1743–1794 · French
Chemistry (the Chemical Revolution)
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, often called the father of modern chemistry, overthrew the phlogiston theory by showing that combustion and respiration involve combination with oxygen. Through careful weighing he established the conservation of mass, showed that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen (both names he coined), and with colleagues created the modern system of chemical nomenclature. A wealthy tax farmer, he was guillotined during the Terror in 1794.
How to spot them
- ▸'Father of modern chemistry'; overthrew phlogiston
- ▸Named oxygen and hydrogen; law of conservation of mass
- ▸Traité élémentaire de chimie (1789); wife Marie-Anne Paulze as collaborator and illustrator
- ▸Member of the Ferme générale (tax farm); guillotined in 1794
Key discoveries & works
Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787)
With Guyton de Morveau, Berthollet and Fourcroy: the system of naming compounds from their constituents
Oxygen theory of combustion (1770s–1780s)
Burning and calcination are combination with oxygen, not the release of phlogiston
Coining of the names 'oxygen' and 'hydrogen' (1770s–1780s)
From the Greek for 'acid-former' and 'water-former'
Ice calorimeter experiments on respiration with Pierre-Simon Laplace (1782–1783)
Showed respiration is a slow form of combustion producing heat
Key ideas
- Conservation of mass: matter is neither created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction
- An element is a substance that cannot be broken down further by chemical analysis
- Water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, not an element
- Quantitative chemistry: precise weighing of reactants and products as the basis of argument
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Paris; trained in law before turning to science
- •Elected to the Académie des sciences in 1768
- •Invested in the Ferme générale, the private tax-collecting company, which led to his arrest in 1793
- •Directed the royal gunpowder administration and had his laboratory at the Paris Arsenal
- •His wife Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze translated English works for him and drew the plates for the Traité
- •Worked on the commission that developed the metric system
- •Guillotined on 8 May 1794 alongside other tax farmers, including his father-in-law
- •Joseph-Louis Lagrange is said to have lamented that it took only a moment to cut off that head, and a century might not produce another like it
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Science History Institute — Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier