LAVOISIER, ANTOINE-LAURENT

born Aug. 26, 1743, Paris died May 8, 1794, Paris French scientist usually regarded as the founder of modern chemistry. He made quantitative discoveries leading to the discovery of oxygen and the composition of water and various organic compounds. During the reign of Louis XVI (including the early Revolutionary period) he was an important public official and was later guillotined. A brief account of the life and works of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier follows; for a full biography, see Lavoisier. Lavoisier had simultaneous careers in public service and in science. He was a member of the Ferme gnrale, the main tax-collecting agency; he instituted improvements in the manufacture of gunpowder, demonstrated the advantages of scientific agriculture, planned improvements in the social and economic condition of the province of Orlans, and was a member of the commission appointed to secure uniformity of weights and measures throughout France. The report of that commission led to the adoption of the metric system. Lavoisier's initial scientific achievements (1772) were concerned with the gain or loss of weight that occurs when substances are burned or reduced with charcoal; he ascribed the changes in weight to absorption or loss of air, a substance he identified with the dephlogisticated air prepared by Joseph Priestley in 1774. In a memoir presented in 1777, Lavoisier proposed the name oxygen (acid producer) for dephlogisticated air, believing that all acids result from its union with other substances. Adoption of Lavoisier's chemical doctrines, as presented in Trait lmentaire de chimie (1789), marked the end of the phlogiston theory of combustion. born Aug. 26, 1743, Paris, France died May 8, 1794, Paris French scientist, usually regarded as the founder of modern chemistry. He was a brilliant experimenter and many-sided genius who was active in public affairs as well as in science. Lavoisier developed a new theory of combustion that led to the overthrow of the phlogistic doctrine, which had dominated the course of chemistry for more than a century. His fundamental studies on oxidation demonstrated the role of oxygen in chemical processes and showed quantitatively the similarity between oxidation and respiration. He formulated the principle of the conservation of matter in chemical reactions. He clarified the distinction between elements and compounds and was instrumental in devising the modern system of chemical nomenclature. Lavoisier was one of the first scientific workers to introduce quantitative procedures into chemical investigations. His experimental ingenuity, exact methods, and cogent reasoning, no less than his discoveries, revolutionized chemistry. His name is indissolubly linked to the establishment of the foundations upon which modern science rests. Lavoisier's father, an avocat au parlement (parliamentary counsel), gave him an excellent education at the Collge Mazarin, where, along with a solid classical grounding in language, literature, and philosophy, he received the best available training in the sciences, including mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and botany. Following his family's tradition, he pursued the study of law, and he received his license to practice in 1764. His inquiring mind, however, continually drew him to science. In 1766 he received a gold medal from the Academy of Sciences for an essay on the best means of lighting a large town. Among his early work were papers on the Aurora Borealis, on thunder, and on the composition of gypsum. Pursuing an early interest in rocks and minerals, he accompanied the geologist J.-E. Guettard on a long geological trip and assisted him in preparing his mineralogical atlas of France. In 1768, after presenting a paper on the analysis of water samples, Lavoisier was admitted to the academy as adjoint-chimiste (associate chemist). He passed through all the grades in the academic structure and was made director in 1785 and treasurer in 1791. Through his family, Lavoisier became independently wealthy in his early 20s. In 1771 he married Marie Paulze, who would later assist him in his work by illustrating his experiments, recording results, and translating scientific articles from English. In accordance with a common practice among the wealthy bourgeoisie at the time, his father bought him a title of nobility in 1772, and a few years later Lavoisier purchased the country estate of Frchines, near Blois. Additional reading A definitive annotated survey of Lavoisier's writing is presented in Denis I. Duveen and Herbert S. Klickstein, A Bibliography of the Works of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, 17431794 (1955), with a Supplement (1965). Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Oeuvres de Lavoisier, 6 vol. (186293, reissued 1965), is a collected edition that includes all his principal works and memoirs from the academy volumes, as well as numerous miscellaneous writings.Douglas McKie, Antoine Lavoisier: Scientist, Economist, Social Reformer (1952, reprinted 1980), is an authoritative biography. Henry Guerlac, LavoisierThe Crucial Year: The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772 (1961, reprinted 1990), and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, Chemist and Revolutionary (1975), focus on his research. Lavoisier's place in the history of science and in the development of scientific disciplines as independent branches of knowledge is explored in Kenneth S. Davis, The Cautionary Scientists: Priestley, Lavoisier, and the Founding of Modern Chemistry (1966); Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 16661803 (1971); Wilda C. Anderson, Between the Library and the Laboratory: The Language of Chemistry in Eighteenth-Century France (1984); Frederick Lawrence Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life: An Exploration of Scientific Creativity (1985); Marco Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter: The Definition of Chemistry from Agricola to Lavoisier (1993); and Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution (1993). Denis Ian Duveen The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica