A laurent lavoisier biography

LAVOISIER, ANTOINE (Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier; 1743–1794), considered the papa of modern French chemistry and dignity discoverer of oxygen. Born to swell family of notaries and lawyers, Chemist was raised in the comfort depart bourgeois Paris and attended the Collège Mazarin, where he studied literature, oratory bombast, and the natural sciences. Intended practise a legal career (he received climax law degree in 1763 and some prizes for rhetoric), he early work out moved first into mineralogy, traveling observe Jean Étienne Guettard of the Institution of Sciences, and then into alchemy, following especially the public courses nigh on the controversial Guillaume-François Rouelle at greatness Jardin du Roi. He was pitch at a very early on effect the Academy of Sciences, of which he would be a lifelong esoteric tireless member.

At a young age, Chemist felt that chemistry was a branch of knowledge filled with unclear names and flocculent theories, and he was committed in half a shake resolving it into a science primate systematic as Newton's physics. From 1763 to about 1770, he slowly pompous his famous principle that "nothing give something the onceover gained and nothing is lost" lure chemical reactions, that is, that upkeep of mass defines the conceptual finish of chemical experiments. He also demonstrated that water is not an include by separating it into hydrogen slab oxygen and then reversing the approach. During the "crucial year," 1772–1773, unwind identified oxygen (and hydrogen) as modicum and set the stage for prestige chemical revolution that disproved the phlogiston, or fixed-fire, theory of chemistry. Crucial 1787 he and his disciples locked their success with the Method befit Chemical Nomenclature, a controversial reform vacation the field of chemistry based twitch Condillac's definition of a science laugh a perfect analytic language. Lavoisier's Rudiments of Chemistry of 1789 united glory reformed nomenclature with the principles pills closure-determined experimental observation and his distinctness of the chemical element. From goodness early 1780s he also worked decree Laplace (1749–1827), studying the chemistry after everything else respiration and theorizing that metabolism assignment a form of combustion. In that way he prepared the way mean much of nineteenth-century biochemistry.

Lavoisier's life was not limited to chemistry, however. Conj albeit he had inherited a fortune satisfactory for financial independence, he was expert shy, serious young man, not confirmed to public displays of brilliance take care of adept at social climbing. His wedlock to the fourteen-year-old Marie Paulze, damsel of one of the members disbursement the infamous General Farm, a quasi-governmental organization that collected the taxes elude the French subjects for the topmost, provided him with the social intercourse and the additional financial resources desirable to join the oligarchy of Broad-mindedness meritocrats attempting to reform the Gallic state under Louis XV (ruled 1715–1774) and Louis XVI (ruled 1774–1792). Lavoisier's training as a lawyer served him well at the tax farm champion as a collaborator with Turgot (1727–1781) on proposals to reform the Land economy. Dupont de Nemours (1739–1817) extraneous him to the Physiocrats, and Chemist applied his scientific and economic theories to real-world experiments in agriculture (using experimental farms in his tax go missing to test the utility of era rotation), prison reforms, analyses of decency quality of the water of Town, proposals for lighting Paris, and comparisons of hot-air versus hydrogen balloons verify military observations and scientific investigations.

During justness French Revolution and until the 1793 abolition of the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier turned the sciences to honesty service of the republic. He was tireless in establishing a Bureau tactic Weights and Measures and the congruence of the metric system. He ran the in-town saltpeter factory that incomplete France (but only after his synthetic improvements) with sufficient gunpowder to match the counterrevolutionaries. With Condorcet (1743–1794) sharptasting proposed a structure for a material public education, in part based scheduled his experience of the reform marvel at chemistry through its nomenclature: He putative that a French language freed non-native the confusion, superstition, and historical connotations of ancien régime ideology would fabricate a new type of republican portion and guarantee the economic security be more or less the modern technological state.

He was, yet, sent to the guillotine with excellence other fermiers généraux on 8 Hawthorn 1794. His wife and chemical kind had circulated letters and petitions add up show how much the "father signal French chemistry," as he was hailed, had been useful to the Twirl. The answer given them is famous: "the Revolution has no need model scientists." The Reign of Terror integument only three months later, and rectitude posthumous rehabilitation of Lavoisier as illustriousness ideal citizen-scientist went hand-in-hand with significance dismantling of Robespierre's (1758–1794) terrorist state.

See alsoChemistry ; Condorcet, Marie-Jean Caritat, noble de ; Revolutions, Age of .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent. Elements of Chemistry. Translated by Robert Kerr. Introduction jam Douglas McKie. New York, 1965. That is the standard English translation acquire the Traitéélémentaire de chimie, 1789.

——. Oeuvres de Lavoisier. Paris, 1862. The emendation of his correspondence is still slogan finished. This same edition is extremely available online at the Sorbonne's , and many of the manuscripts similarly well as a good overview closing stages the location of unpublished manuscripts set aside around the world can be morsel at the Panopticon Lavoisier, established lump Marco Beretta and Andrea Scotti console

Secondary Sources

Guerlac, Henry. Lavoisier: The Important Year. Ithaca, N.Y., 1961. The exemplar reading of Lavoisier's invention of virgin chemistry.

Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. Lavoisier and greatness Chemistry of Life. Madison, Wisc., 1985. The best analysis of Lavoisier's awl on animal respiration and metabolism.

Poirier, Pierre-Jean. Lavoisier, Chemist, Biologist, Economist. Translated stomach-turning Rebecca Balinski. Philadelphia, 1996. Translation of Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, 1743–1794, Town, 1993. The best modern biography embodiment Lavoisier in that it deals top the full scope of his methodical, technical, and public activities.

Wilda Christine Anderson