Antoine Lavoisier Biography

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier was born on August 26, 1743, in Paris, Kingdom of France and died at his fiftieth birthday on May 8, 1794, in Paris, the first French Republic. He was one of the protagonists of the Scientific Revolution (XVI-XVII) where the formation of chemistry as a science was consolidated. This is why he is considered the father of modern chemistry.

Son of a lawyer, his first steps were directed to the world of law, even came to study in 1754 in the elite school The College of the four nations but, after listening to lectures by the astronomer Lacaille, developed an enthusiasm to know and practice sciences, in such a way that he immersed himself in geology and, although he achieved a remarkable job in it, soon he found himself with the passion of his life, chemistry.

In 1771, at the age of twenty-eight, Lavoisier married Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, daughter of a co-owner of the Ferme Générale, company responsible for the collection of taxes of the Kingdom of France in the seventeenth century. The dowry allowed him to build a fully equipped laboratory, his wife was a tireless and persevering assistant for all her husband’s experiments. Although the commitment was for economic convenience, the marriage was really happy during the first years. However, with the passage of time, Lavoisier’s excessive work caused his beautiful wife to seek attention in other’s men.

In 1766, he received the gold medal of the French Academy of Sciences for an essay on the best method of public lighting for large populations. He held various public positions, among them the one of state director of the works for the manufacture of gunpowder in 1776, was a member of a commission to establish a uniform system of weights in 1789 and treasurer of 1791.

His studies and discoveries range from the oxidation of bodies, the phenomenon of animal respiration, the analysis of air, the law of conservation of mass or law Lomonosov Lavoisier, caloric theory and combustion. He showed that in a chemical reaction, the amount of matter is the same at the end and at the beginning of the reaction. He also investigated the composition of water and named its components oxygen and hydrogen.

Some of his experiments examined the nature of combustion, showing that it is a process in which the combination of a substance with oxygen occurs. He also revealed the role of oxygen in the respiration of animals and plants. Together with the French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet and others, he conceived a chemical nomenclature, or system of names, which serves as the basis for the modern system. He described it in the work Method of chemical nomenclature (1787). In Elemental Treaty of Chemistry (1789), he clarified the concept of the element as a simple substance that can not be divided by any known chemical analysis method. He wrote on combustion (1777) and Considerations on the nature of acids (1778).

Among the many discoveries of Lavoisier, those that had the most impact were his studies on plant processes that were related to gaseous exchanges when animals breathe (1783). Working with mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace, Lavoisier locked a guinea pig for about 10 hours in a glass bell that contained oxygen and measured the carbon dioxide produced. He also measured the amount of oxygen consumed by a man in activity and rest. With these experiments, he was able to show that the combustion of carbon compounds with oxygen is the real source of animal heat and that oxygen consumption increases during physical work.

All the theories he proved were not on the air, and many scientists had tried to find answers to the different enigmas of the moment, but it was Boyle who gave Lavoisier the basis for all his scientific work. With the passage of time, he not only managed to surpass his predecessor, but he started an ascending race of investigations, for what was called to this era, the “Golden Age of Chemistry.”

But it was a time he did not see. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, while he was working on collecting contributions, he was arrested in 1793. Although many tried to save him, on the morning of May 8, 1794, at the age of fifty-three, at his intellectual summit, he was tried and sentenced to death. When Lavoisier asked that the execution of the sentence be suspended a couple of weeks to complete some scientific work, the judge replied: “The revolution does not need scientists.” A few hours later, in what is now the Plaza de la Concordia, he walked to the guillotine with calm and dignified air. One of his scientific contemporaries, the mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange, commented: “It only took a moment to cut off his head, but France may not produce another like his in a whole century”.