"The Father of Modern Chemistry" & The man named "Oxygen" - Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

The Father of Modern Chemistry

                Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, a metriculous experimenter, revolutionized chemistry.  He established the law of conservation of mass, determined that combustion and respiration are caused by chemical reactions with what he named "Oxygen", and helped systematize chemical nomenclature, among many other accomplishments.  The son of a wealthy Parisian lawyer, Lavoisier completed a law degree in accordance with family wishes.  His real interest, however, was in science, which he pursued with passion while leading a full public life. 

 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

       

           On the basis of his earliest scientific work, mostly in geology, he was elected in 1768, at the early age of 25, to the Academy of Sciences, France's most elite scientific society.  A few years later he married Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze.  Madame Lavoisier prepared herself to be her husband's scientific collaborator by learning English to translate the work of British chemists like Joseph Priestley and by studying art and engraving to illustrate Antoine-Laurent's scientific experiments.

Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze

            In 1775, Lavoisier was appointed a commissioner of the Royal Gunpowder and Saltpetre Administration and took up residence in the Paris Arsenal.  There he equipped a fine laboratory, which attracted young chemists from all over Europe to learn about the "Chemical Revolution" then in progress.  He meanwhile succeeded in producing more and better gunpowder by increasing the supply and ensuring the purity of the constituents-saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulphur, and charcoal, as well as by improving the methods of granulating the powder.

The man named "Oxygen" 

            Characteristic of Lavoisier's chemistry was his systematic determination of the weights of reagents and products involved in chemical reactions, including the gaseous components, and his underlying belief that matter, identified by weight, would be conserved through any reaction which is known as the law of conservation of mass.

Water Molecules

          

             Among his contributions to chemistry associated with this method were the understanding of combustion and respiration are caused by chemical reactions with the part of the air that he named "Oxygen", and his definitive proof by composition and decomposition that water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen.

            His giving new names to substances, most of which are still used today, was an important means of forwarding the Chemical Revolution, because these terms expressed the theory behind them. In the case of Oxygen, from the Greek meaning "acid-former", Lavoisier expressed his theory that oxygen was the acidifying principle.  He considered 33 substances as elements-by his definition, substances that chemical analyses had failed to break down into simpler entities.

Mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange

            Lavoisier, a political and social liberal, took an active part in the events leading to the French Revolution, and in its early years he drew up plans and reports advocating many reforms, including the establishment of the metric system of weights and measures.  

            Despite his eminence and his services to science and France, he came under attack as a former farmer-general of taxes and was guillotined in 1794.  A noted Mathematician, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, remarked of this event.  "It took them only an instant to cut off that head, and a hundred years my not produce another like it"