Tribute to Antoine Lavoisier (nonfiction)
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution; French: [ɑ̃twan lɔʁɑ̃ də lavwazje]; 26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794) was a French nobleman and chemist central to the 18th-century chemical revolution who had a profound influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology.
Lavoisier is widely considered in popular literature as the father of modern chemistry.
He played a key role in changing chemistry from a qualitative science to a quantitative science. For example, in a very precise quantitative experiment, Lavoisier showed that the "earthy" sediment produced after long-continued reflux heating of water in a glass vessel was not due to a conversion of the water into earth but rather to the gradual disintegration of the inside of the glass vessel produced by the boiling water.
Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion, and he recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783).
Lavoisier opposed phlogiston theory, and his work on combustion was influential in disproving the existence of phlogiston. In cooperation with mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace, Lavoisier synthesized water by burning jets of hydrogen and oxygen in a bell jar over mercury. The quantitative results were good enough to support the contention that water was not an element, as had been thought for over 2,000 years, but a compound of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen. The interpretation of water as a compound explained the inflammable air generated from dissolving metals in acids (hydrogen produced when water decomposes) and the reduction of calces by inflammable air (a combination of gas from calx with oxygen to form water).
He helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature.
Lavoisier predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and was also the first to establish that sulfur was an element (1777) rather than a compound.
He discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.
Lavoisier was a powerful member of a number of aristocratic councils, and an administrator of the Ferme générale. The Ferme générale was one of the most hated components of the Ancien Régime because of the profits it took at the expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the violence of its armed agents. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research.
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External links
- Antoine Lavoisier @ Wikipedia