Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26 1743 – May 8 1794) was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics. He stated the first version of the Law of Conservation of Matter, recognized and named oxygen (1778), disproved the phlogiston theory, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. Lavoisier is often referred to as the father of modern chemistry. He was also an investor and administrator of the Ferme Générale, a private tax collection company; chairman of the board of the Discount Bank (later the Banque de France); and a powerful member of a number of other aristocratic administrative councils. Due to his prominence in the pre-revolutionary government in France, he was beheaded at the height of the French Revolution.

Contributions to chemistry

Beginning in 1775, he served in the Royal Gunpowder Administration, where his work led to improvements in the production of gunpowder and the use of agricultural chemistry by designing a new method for preparing saltpeter.

Related Topics:
1775 - Royal Gunpowder Administration - Gunpowder - Saltpeter

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Some of Lavoisier's most important experiments examined the nature of combustion, or burning. Through these experiments, he demonstrated that burning is a process that involves the combination of a substance with oxygen. He also demonstrated the role of oxygen in metal rusting, as well as its role in animal and plant respiration: working with Pierre-Simon Laplace, Lavoisier conducted experiments that showed that respiration was essentially a slow combustion of organic material using inhaled oxygen. Lavoisier's explanation of combustion replaced the phlogiston theory, which postulates that materials release a substance called phlogiston when they burn.

Related Topics:
Combustion - Pierre-Simon Laplace - Phlogiston

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He also discovered that the inflammable air of Henry Cavendish which he termed hydrogen (Greek for water-former), combined with oxygen to produce a dew, as Joseph Priestley had reported, which appeared to be water. Lavoisier's work was partly based on the work of Priestley (he corresponded with Priestley and fellow members of the Lunar Society). However, he tried to take credit for Priestley's discoveries. This tendency to use the results of others without acknowledgment, then draw conclusions is said to be characteristic of Lavoisier. In Sur la combustion en general (On Combustion in general), 1777 and Considérations Générales sur la Nature des Acides (General Consideration on the Nature of Acids), 1778), he demonstrated that the "air" responsible for combustion was also the source of acidity. In 1779, he named this part of the air oxygen (Greek for acid-former), and the other azote (Greek for no life). In Reflexions sur le Phlogistique, 1783, Lavoisier showed the phlogiston theory to be inconsistent.

Related Topics:
Henry Cavendish - Hydrogen - Joseph Priestley - Lunar Society - 1777 - 1778 - 1779 - 1783 - Phlogiston theory

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Lavoisier's experiments were among the first truly quantitative chemical experiments ever performed; that is, he carefully weighed the reactants and products involved, a crucial step in the advancement of chemistry. He showed that, although matter changes its state in a chemical reaction, the quantity of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every chemical reaction. He burnt phosphorus and sulfur in air, and proved that the products weighed more than the original. Nevertheless, the weight gained was lost from the air. These experiments provided evidence for the law of the conservation of matter. Lavoisier also investigated the composition of water and air, which at the time were considered elements. He discovered the components of water were oxygen and hydrogen, and that air was a mixture of gases - primarily nitrogen and oxygen. With the French chemists Claude-Louis Berthollet, Antoine Fourcroy and Guyton de Morveau, Lavoisier devised a chemical nomenclature, or a system of names describing the structure of chemical compounds. He described it in Méthode de nomenclature chimique (Method of Chemical Nomenclature, 1787). Their system facilitated communication of discoveries between chemists of different backgrounds and is still largely in use today, including names such as sulfuric acid, sulfates, and sulfites.

Related Topics:
Nitrogen - Claude-Louis Berthollet - 1787

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His Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry, 1789, translated into English by Robert Kerr) is considered to be the first modern chemical textbook, and presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, contained a clear statement of the Law of Conservation of Mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston. Also, Lavoisier clarified the concept of an element as a simple substance that could not be broken down by any known method of chemical analysis, and he devised a theory of the formation of chemical compounds from elements. In addition, it contained a list of elements, or substances that could not be broken down further, which included oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, mercury, zinc, and sulphur. It also forms the basis for the modern list of elements. His list, however, also included light and caloric, which he believed to be material substances. While many leading chemists of the time refused to believe Lavoisier's new revelations, the Elementary Treatise was written well enough to convince the younger generation.

Related Topics:
1789 - Robert Kerr - Textbook - Law of Conservation of Mass - Phosphorus - Mercury - Zinc - Sulphur - Caloric

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Lavoisier's fundamental contributions to chemistry were a result of a conscious effort to fit all experiments into the framework of a single theory. He established the consistent use of chemical balance, used oxygen to overthrow the phlogiston theory, and developed a new system of chemical nomenclature which held that oxygen was an essential constituent of all acids (which later turned out to be erroneous). For the first time the modern notion of elements is laid out systematically; the three or four elements of classical chemistry gave way to the modern system, and Lavoisier worked out reactions in chemical equations that respect the conservation of mass (see, for example, the nitrogen cycle). His contributions are considered the most important in advancing the science of chemistry to the level of what had been achieved in physics and mathematics.

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