- In full:
- Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
- Died:
- May 8, 1794,
Paris
(aged 50)
Top Questions
What are Antoine Lavoisier’s accomplishments?
Antoine Lavoisier determined that
oxygen
was a key substance in
combustion
, and he gave the
element
its name. He developed the modern system of naming chemical substances and has been called the “father of modern
chemistry
” for his emphasis on careful experimentation.
How was Antoine Lavoisier educated?
After studying the humanities and sciences at the College Mazarin, Antoine Lavoisier studied law. However, he devoted much of his time to lectures on
physics
and
chemistry
and to working with leading scientists.
Where was Antoine Lavoisier born and raised?
Antoine Lavoisier was born and raised in Paris. He was the first child and only son of a wealthy family.
How did Antoine Lavoisier die?
Antoine Lavoisier was
guillotined
during the
French Revolution’s
Reign of Terror
on May 8, 1794. Under the monarchy, Lavoisier had a share in the General Farm, an enterprise that collected taxes for the government. He was executed with his father-in-law and 26 other General Farm members.
Who was Marie-Anne Lavoisier?
Marie-Anne Paulze married Antoine Lavoisier in 1771. She assisted Antoine in his experiments. She did the drawings for many of his works and translated works from English for him since he did not know that language.
Antoine Lavoisier
(born August 26, 1743, Paris, France?died May 8, 1794, Paris) was a prominent French
chemist
and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of
oxygen
and coauthored the modern system for naming chemical substances. Having also served as a leading financier and public administrator before the
French Revolution
, he was executed with other financiers during the
Terror
.
Early life and education
Lavoisier was the first child and only son of a wealthy
bourgeois
family living in
Paris
. As a youth he exhibited an unusual studiousness and concern for the public good. After being introduced to the humanities and sciences at the prestigious College Mazarin, he studied law. Since the Paris law faculty made few demands on its students, Lavoisier was able to spend much of his three years as a law student attending public and private lectures on
chemistry
and
physics
and working under the tutelage of leading naturalists. Upon completing his legal studies, Lavoisier, like his father and his maternal grandfather before him, was admitted to the elite Order of Barristers, whose members presented cases before the High Court (
Parlement
) of Paris. But rather than practice law, Lavoisier began pursuing scientific research that in 1768 gained him admission into
France’s
foremost natural philosophy society, the
Academy of Sciences
in Paris.
Pneumatic chemistry
The
chemistry
Lavoisier studied as a student was not a subject particularly noted for
conceptual
clarity or theoretical rigour. Although chemical writings contained considerable information about the substances chemists studied, little agreement existed upon the precise
composition
of
chemical elements
or between explanations of changes in composition. Many natural philosophers still viewed the four elements of Greek natural philosophy?earth, air, fire, and water?as the primary substances of all matter. Chemists like Lavoisier focused their attention upon analyzing “mixts” (i.e.,
compounds
), such as the
salts
formed when
acids
combine with
alkalis
. They hoped that by first identifying the properties of simple substances they would then be able to construct theories to explain the properties of
compounds
.
It was previously claimed that the elements were distinguishable by certain physical properties:
water
and earth were incompressible, air could be both expanded and compressed, whereas fire could not be either contained or measured. In the 1720s the English cleric and natural philosopher
Stephen Hales
demonstrated that atmospheric air loses its “spring” (i.e., elasticity) once it becomes “fixed” in solids and liquids. Perhaps, Hales suggested, air was really just a vapour like steam, and its spring, rather than being an essential property of the element, was created by
heat
. Hales’s experiments were an important first step in the experimental study of specific airs or
gases
, a subject that came to be called
pneumatic
chemistry.
Britannica Quiz
So Much Chemistry, So Little Time Quiz
In the 1750s the Scottish chemist
Joseph Black
demonstrated experimentally that the air fixed in certain reactions is chemically different from common air. Black wanted to know why slaked
quicklime
(hydrated calcium oxide) was neutralized when exposed to the atmosphere. He found that it absorbed only one component of the atmosphere,
carbon dioxide
, which he called “fixed air.” Black’s work marked the beginning of investigative efforts devoted to identifying chemically distinct airs, an area of research that grew rapidly during the latter half of the century. Thus, pneumatic chemistry was a lively subject at the time Lavoisier became interested in a particular set of problems that involved air: the linked phenomena of
combustion
,
respiration
, and what 18th-century chemists called calcination (the change of metals to a powder [calx], such as that obtained by the rusting of
iron
).
Antoine Lavoisier
French chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743?94) at work in his laboratory.
The assertion that
mass
is conserved in chemical reactions was an assumption of
Enlightenment
investigators rather than a discovery revealed by their experiments. Lavoisier believed that matter was neither created nor destroyed in
chemical reactions
, and in his experiments he sought to demonstrate that this belief was not violated. Still he had difficulty proving that his view was universally valid. His insistence that chemists accepted this assumption as a law was part of his larger program for raising chemistry to the investigative standards and causal explanation found in
contemporary
experimental physics. While other chemists were also looking for conservation principles capable of explaining chemical reactions, Lavoisier was particularly intent on collecting and weighing all the substances involved in the reactions he studied. His success in the many elaborate experiments he conducted was in large part due to his independent wealth, which enabled him to have expensive apparatus built to his design, and to his ability to recruit and direct talented research associates. The fact that French chemistry students are still taught the
conservation of mass
as “Lavoisier’s law” is indicative of his success in making this principle a foundation of modern chemistry.
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