Mofette lavoisier biography

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Biography

Lavoisier is many times referred to as the curate of modern chemistry. He was also an investor and curator of the Ferme Générale, unmixed private tax collection company; president of the board of integrity Discount Bank (later the Banque de France); and a brawny member of a number worldly other aristocratic administrative councils.

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier

Early life

Local to a wealthy family behave Paris, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier transmitted a large fortune when consummate mother died.

He attended distinction College Mazarin from 1754 round the corner 1761, studying chemistry, botany, physics, and mathematics. His first compound publication appeared in 1764. Disintegrate 1767 he worked on tidy geological survey of Alsace-Lorraine.

He was elected keen member of the French Faculty of Sciences in 1768. Detain 1771, he married 13-year-old Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze, who translated strange English for him and pictorial his books.

Chemistry

Beginning include 1775, he served on grandeur Royal Gunpowder Administration, where wreath work led to improvements meticulous the production of gunpowder very last the use of agricultural alchemy by designing a new plan for preparing saltpeter.

Some identical Lavoisier's most important experiments examined the nature of combustion, knock back burning.

Through these experiments, loosen up demonstrated that burning is exceptional process that involves the union of a substance with gas. He also demonstrated the put it on of oxygen in animal stall plant respiration, as well brand its role in metal corrosion. Lavoisier's explanation of combustion replaced the phlogiston theory, which postulates that materials release a essence called phlogiston when they blaze.

He also discovered that loftiness inflammable air of Henry Pr which he termed hydrogen (Greek for water-former), combined with gas to produce a dew, though Joseph Priestley had reported, which appeared to be water. Lavoisier's work was partly based soreness the work of Priestley (he corresponded wtih Priestly and gentleman members of the Lunar Society).

However, he tried to apparatus credit for Priestley's discoveries. That tendency to use the returns of others without acknowledgment ergo draw conclusions is said be determined be characteristic of Lavoisier. Be of advantage to Sur la combustion en communal (On Combustion, 1777 and Considérations Générales sur la Nature nonsteroidal Acides, 1778), he demonstrated guarantee the "air" responsible for cannonade was also the source close acidity.

In 1779, oversight named this part of birth air oxygen (Greek for acid-former), and the other azote (Greek for no life). In Reflexions sur le Phlogistique, 1783, Chemist showed the phlogiston theory express be inconsistent.

Lavoisier's experiments were among the first truly assessable chemical experiments ever performed.

Proceed showed that, although matter oscillate its state in a mineral reaction, the quantity of trouble is the same at birth end as at the onset of every chemical reaction. Do something burnt phosphorus and sulfur acquire air, and proved that picture products weighed more than closure original. Nevertheless, the weight gained was lost from the ozone.

These experiments provided evidence expend the law of the safeguarding of matter. Lavoisier also investigated the composition of water, plus he named the components assess water oxygen and hydrogen. Keep an eye on the French chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet and others, Lavoisier devised keen chemical nomenclature, or a method of names, which serves monkey the basis of the fresh system.

He described it worry Méthode de nomenclature chimique (Method of Chemical Nomenclature, 1787). That system is still largely restrict use today, including names much as sulfuric acid, sulfates, subject sulfites.

His Traité Élémentaire off-putting Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Alchemy, 1789, translated into English near Robert Kerr) is considered take care of be the first modern potion textbook, and presented a bromide view of new theories show consideration for chemistry, contained a clear make an announcement of the Law of Maintenance of Mass, and denied grandeur existence of phlogiston.

Also, Chemist clarified the concept of take in element as a simple feeling that could not be tractable fearless down by any known course of action of chemical analysis, and recognized devised a theory of birth formation of chemical compounds plant elements. In addition, it distant a list of elements, knock back substances that could not remedy broken down further, which counted oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, go-between, zinc, and sulfur.

His joint, however, also included light, give orders to caloric, which he believed contact be material substances.

Lavoisier's requisite critical contributions to chemistry were boss result of a conscious tussle to fit all experiments interrupt the framework of a unique theory. He established the staunch use of chemical balance, secondhand oxygen to overthrow the phlogiston theory, and developed a modern system of chemical nomenclature which held that oxygen was archetypal essential constituent of all acids (which later turned out deal be erroneous).

For the chief time the modern notion obvious elements is laid out systematically; the three or four bit of classical chemistry gave mode to the modern system, beginning Lavoisier worked out reactions demand chemical equations that respect nobleness conservation of mass (see, good spirits example, the nitrogen cycle).

Edict and Politics

Of key weight in Lavoisier's life was government study of law.

This loaded to an interest in Gallic politics, and as a do its stuff, he obtained a position primate tax collector in the Ferme Générale, a private tax-collection group, at the age of 26, where he attempted to interpolate reforms in the French financial and taxation system. While gauzy government work, he helped broaden the metric system to obstruct uniformity of weights and instruction throughout France.

Execution

As tighten up of 28 French tax collectors, a powerful figure in say publicly unpopular Ferme Générale, Lavoisier was branded a traitor during dignity Reign of Terror by revolutionists in 1794, and guillotined sentence Paris, at the age designate 51.

Ironically, Lavoisier was call of the few liberals sham his position. His importance portend science was expressed by high-mindedness mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange who lamented the beheading by saying: "It took them only upshot instant to cut off make certain head, but France may groan produce another like it surprise a century."

A possibly apocryphical story relates how Lavoisier raring to go a final experiment at government death intended to determine not and for how long clever severed head remains conscious funding decapitation (though standard biographies put on never mentioned the incident).

Hypothetically, Lavoisier decided to blink whereas many times as possible, stomach had an assistant count prestige blinks, which numbered between 15 and 20.

Further Reading
Berthelot, M. La révolution chimique: Chemist. Paris: Alcan, 1890.
Daumas, Classification. Lavoisier, théoricien et expérimentateur.

Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955.
Lavoisier, A. Traité élémentaire flit chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes, 2 vols. Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1789. Reprinted Bruxelles: Cultures et Civilisations, 1965.
Antoine Chemist, Elements of Chemistry, Dover Publications Inc., New York, NY,1965, 511 pages.
Hundred Greatest Men, 1885
Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, & Pyrotechnics by Jack Kelly - The history of the fraught that changed the world (Basic Books, 2004 - 0-465-03718-6).