Antoine Lavoisier, in full Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, (born August 26, 1743, Paris, France—died May 8, 1794, Paris), prominent French chemist and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and coauthored the modern system for naming chemical substances. Having also served as a leading financier and public administrator before the French Revolution, he was executed with other financiers during the revolutionary terror. Top Questions What are Antoine Lavoisier’s accomplishments? Antoine Lavoisier determined that oxygen was a key substance in combustion, and he gave the element its name. He developed the modern system of naming chemical substances and has been called the “father of modern chemistry” for his emphasis on careful experimentation. How was Antoine Lavoisier educated? After studying the humanities and sciences at the Collège Mazarin, Antoine Lavoisier studied law. However, he devoted much of his time to lectures on physics and chemistry and to working with leading scientists. Where was Antoine Lavoisier born and raised? Antoine Lavoisier was born and raised in Paris. He was the first child and only son of a wealthy family. How did Antoine Lavoisier die? Antoine Lavoisier was guillotined during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror on May 8, 1794. Under the monarchy, Lavoisier had a share in the General Farm, an enterprise that collected taxes for the government. He was executed with his father-in-law and 26 other General Farm members. Who was Marie-Anne Lavoisier? Marie-Anne Paulze married Antoine Lavoisier in 1771. She assisted Antoine in his experiments. She did the drawings for many of his works and translated works from English for him since he did not know that language.

Early life and education Lavoisier was the first child and only son of a wealthy bourgeois family living in Paris. As a youth he exhibited an unusual studiousness and concern for the public good. After being introduced to the humanities and sciences at the prestigious Collège Mazarin, he studied law. Since the Paris law faculty made few demands on its students, Lavoisier was able to spend much of his three years as a law student attending public and private lectures on chemistry and physics and working under the tutelage of leading naturalists. Upon completing his legal studies, Lavoisier, like his father and his maternal grandfather before him, was admitted to the elite Order of Barristers, whose members presented cases before the High Court (Parlement) of Paris. But rather than practice law, Lavoisier began pursuing scientific research that in 1768 gained him admission into France’s foremost natural philosophy society, the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

Pneumatic chemistry The chemistry Lavoisier studied as a student was not a subject particularly noted for conceptual clarity or theoretical rigour. Although chemical writings contained considerable information about the substances chemists studied, little agreement existed upon the precise composition of chemical elements or between explanations of changes in composition. Many natural philosophers still viewed the four elements of Greek natural philosophy—earth, air, fire, and water—as the primary substances of all matter. Chemists like Lavoisier focused their attention upon analyzing “mixts” (i.e., compounds), such as the salts formed when acids combine with alkalis. They hoped that by first identifying the properties of simple substances they would then be able to construct theories to explain the properties of compounds. It was previously claimed that the elements were distinguishable by certain physical properties: water and earth were incompressible, air could be both expanded and compressed, whereas fire could not be either contained or measured. In the 1720s the English cleric and natural philosopher Stephen Hales demonstrated that atmospheric air loses its “spring” (i.e., elasticity) once it becomes “fixed” in solids and liquids. Perhaps, Hales suggested, air was really just a vapour like steam, and its spring, rather than being an essential property of the element, was created by heat. Hales’s experiments were an important first step in the experimental study of specific airs or gases, a subject that came to be called pneumatic chemistry. Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Subscribe today In the 1750s the Scottish chemist Joseph Black demonstrated experimentally that the air fixed in certain reactions is chemically different from common air. Black wanted to know why slaked quicklime (hydrated calcium oxide) was neutralized when exposed to the atmosphere. He found that it absorbed only one component of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, which he called “fixed air.” Black’s work marked the beginning of investigative efforts devoted to identifying chemically distinct airs, an area of research that grew rapidly during the latter half of the century. Thus, pneumatic chemistry was a lively subject at the time Lavoisier became interested in a particular set of problems that involved air: the linked phenomena of combustion, respiration, and what 18th-century chemists called calcination (the change of metals to a powder [calx], such as that obtained by the rusting of iron).