Comprehensive account illuminating Lavoisier's role in the rise of modern chemistry and the French Revolution.

The author explores the origins of the eighteenth-century chemical revolution as it centers on Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's earliest work on combustion. He shows that the main lines of Lavoisier's theory—including his theory of a heat-fluid, caloric—were elaborated well before his discovery of the role played by oxygen. Contrary to the opinion prevailing at that time, Lavoisier suspected, and demonstrated by experiment, that common air, or some portion of it, combines with substances when they are burned. Professor Guerlac examines critically the theories of other historians of science concerning these first experiments, and tries to unravel the influences which French, German, and British chemists may have had on Lavoisier. He has made use of newly discovered material on this phase of Lavoisier's career, and includes an appendix in which the essential documents are printed together for the first time.

The debt of modern chemistry to Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) is incalculable. With Lavoisier's discoveries of the compositions of air and water (he gave the world the term 'oxygen') and his analysis of the process of combustion, he was able to bury once and for all the then prevalent phlogiston doctrine. He also recognized chemical elements as the ultimate residues of chemical analysis and, with others, worked out the beginnings of the modern system of nomenclature. His premature death at the hands of a Revolutionary tribunal is undoubtedly one of the saddest losses in the history of science. Lavoisier's theories were promulgated widely by a work he published in 1789: Traité élémentairede Chimie. The famous English translation by Robert Kerr was issued a year later. Incorporating the notions of the "new chemistry," the book carefully describes the experiments and reasoning which led Lavoisier to his conclusions, conclusions which were generally accepted by the scientific community almost immediately. It is not too much to claim that Lavoisier's Traité did for chemistry what Newton's Principia did for physics, and that Lavoisier founded modern chemistry. Part One of the Traité covers the composition of the atmosphere and water, and related experiments, one of which (on vinous fermentation) permits Lavoisier to make the first explicit statement of the law of the conservation of matter in chemical change. The second part deals with the compounds of acids with various bases, giving extensive tables of compounds. Its most significant item, however, is the table of simple substances or elements — the first modern list of the chemical elements. The third section of the book reviews in minute detail the apparatus and instruments of chemistry and their uses. Some of these instruments, etc. are illustrated in the section of plates at the end. This new facsimile edition is enhanced by an introductory essay by Douglas McKie, University College London, one of the world's most eminent historians of science. Prof. McKie gives an excellent survey of historical developments in chemistry leading up to the Traité, Lavoisier's major contributions, his work in other fields, and offers a critical evaluation of the importance of this book and Lavoisier's role in the history of chemistry. This new essay helps to make this an authoritative, contemporary English-language edition of one of the supreme classics of science.

Recounts the life of the French chemist whose work helped transform many of the undocumented scientific beliefs of the Middle Ages into an exact science.

Antoine Lavoisier is considered to be the father of modern chemistry. Using experiments and careful measurements, he created a system to help chemists understand how matter behaves. He discovered and named oxygen and hydrogen, and helped set up a system to classify these and other elements. Perhaps his most famous discovery is the role oxygen plays in combustion.

Antoine Lavoisier has been called the founder of modern chemistry. The French scientist is most remembered for developing the scientific method, which is a careful, step-by-step process for proving or disproving something.

Originally published in French in 1993 (Editions Pygmalion/Gerard Watelet, Paris), and expanded and revised for this translation. The founder of modern chemistry, Lavoisier (1743-1794) was active on commisions connected with agriculture, gunpowder, banking, and finance, and was ultimately executed during the Reign of Terror. This biography recounts Lavoisier's scientific accomplishments and his role in the chemical revolution and early history of organic chemistry and physiology; but it is in the examination of his political and economic activities and accomplishments that it breaks new ground. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Antoine Lavoisier-who lived at the zenith of the Enlightenment and died at the hands of the Revolution-was himself a revolutionary.

Until Antoine Lavoisier, all matter was believed to be composed of four elements: earth, water, air and fire. It was Lavoisier who first showed that Nature was made out of much more complicated stuff, and that bodies burn not by releasing their fire element, but by combining with the element oxygen, the same element that enables plants and animals to breathe.