The British Society for the History of Science

Lavoisier's Early Career in Science: An Examination of Some New Evidence

Author(s): J. B. Gough
Source: The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jun., 1968), pp. 5257
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The British Society for the
History of Science
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NOTES AND COMMUNICATIONS

LAVOISIER'S EARLY CAREER IN SCIENCE:

AN EXAMINATION OF SOME NEW EVIDENCE

ByJ. B. GOUGH
I. Introduction

SHORTLY before his death in I934, the British historian of chemistry,

A. N. Meldrum, published two lengthy articles on Lavoisier's early

career in science.' After a careful investigation of the collection of manuscripts at the Acadimie des Sciences in Paris and in light of a detailed and
penetrating analysis of Lavoisier's published work, Meldrum concluded

that as a youth, Lavoisier was concerned with chemistry only to the

extent that he found it useful for his mineralogical and geological researches.
Lavoisier began his career as a mineralogist; he became a chemist

only in I 772, the "crucial year" when he turned his attention to chemical
theory for its own sake and started his famous course of experiments on
the nature of combustion and fixed air. Although some details-notably
concerning Lavoisier's early education2 and geological work3-have been
added to this account since Meldrum's time, the broad conclusions of
Meldrum's study are still generally accepted by historians of the chemical
revolution.
Recently, new evidence has been discovered which indicates that
the young Lavoisier was perhaps more concerned with basic questions
of chemical theory earlier than Meldrum's findings would seem to suggest.
In I959, Rene Fric, the editor of the Lavoisier correspondence, published
a manuscript essay on the elements that Lavoisier had written sometime
prior to August I772.4 This document (which Henry Guerlac has termed,
after Lavoisier's description of it, the Systdme sur les elemens)5 contains
remarkable speculations on the nature of heat, vapours, and air which

on reflection would seem to be far too original and far too closely related
to Lavoisier's later concept of the gaseous state to have been the work of an
utter beginner in chemistry.
In the course of my attempt to discover the origins of this extraordinary document, some new evidence has come to light which clearly
shows Lavoisier's early interest in fundamental problems of chemical
I "Lavoisier's Early Work in Science, 1763-1771", Isis, xix (I933), 330-363; and xx
(1933), 396-425.
2 H. Guerlac, "A Note on Lavoisier's Scientific Education", Isis, xlvii (I 956),2 I I -2 I 6.

3 R. Rappaport, "Lavoisier's Geologic Activities, 1763-1792", Isis, lviii (I965), 375-384.

4 "Contribution a 1'etude de l'6volution des idees de Lavoisier sur la nature de l'air et
sur la calcination des m6taux", Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, xii (1959) [I960],
I38-145.

5 "A Lost Memoir of Lavoisier", Isis, 1 (1959), 125-129.

THE BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE VOL. 4 NO. I3 (i968)

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Lavoisier's Early Career in Science 53

theory. Although it is impossible within the limited compass of this preliminary paper either to give a full analysis of all this evidence or to
show exactly what its importance was in the development of Lavoisier's
concept of the gaseous state, I should like at least to call attention to the
existence of certain documents which will, I believe, shed new light on
Lavoisier's early activities.
II. Eller and the Elements
In May I766 Lavoisier composed two brief notes dealing with

questions of chemical theory. The first of these consists of reflections on

an essay on the elements published by the German chemist and physiologist, Johann Theodore Eller, in the Mimoires of the Berlin Academy

for the year I746.6 The second note, bearing the same date and very
nearly the same title, is a short essay on the elements written by Lavoisier
himself. 7 Maurice Daumas noticed both these documents and even
published portions of them in his recent collection of essays,8 but he

mistook the name Eller in the first document for that of the great Swiss
mathematician Euler; in addition, Daumas apparently thought that
Lavoisier's own essay on the elements was merely a continuation of the
first document. 9

In his memoir on the elements, Eller asserted that there were in

nature only two basic principles-fire and water. Earth could be formed
from water either by prolonged distillation or through the transmutative

agency of plants. Air, according to Eller, was merely a compound of

water and fire. As evidence of this latter supposition, Eller noted that
when water is heated in a vacuum it is transformed into an invisible,
elastic fluid capable of sustaining the mercury in a barometer. He reasoned

that since elasticity was widely taken to be the distinguishing property of

air, the water thus heated must have turned into air.
This mistaken identification of water vapour with air was not so
absurd as it might appear. Until late in the eighteenth century, the idea
that matter was capable of assuming three separate states was not at all
a common one. In particular, the notion of a gaseous state presented
peculiar difficulties.Io In his brief note of May I 766-only one-and-a-half
pages long-Lavoisier summarized with approval Eller's theory concerning the air and stated his intention to investigate it further by reading
6 MSS. Acadirmie des Sciences, Lavoisier, I670 Bmi; the document is entitled, "Chimie Phisique,
Sur les elemens, Sur le feu, l'eau et l'air". Eller's memoir, the "Dissertation sur les elemens ou
premiers principes des corps &c.-Seconde dissertation sur les elemens &c.", appeared in
Histoire de I'Acadtmie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres (Berlin), ii ( 746), 3-48.
7 MSS. Ac. Sci., Lavoisier, I670 Bn; this document is entitled, "Chimie, Sur la matierre
du feu et les elemens en general".

8 Lavoisier, tldoricien et expdrimentateur (Paris, 1955), 26.

9 Daumas, loc. cit.

IO See Maurice Crosland, "The Development of the Concept of the Gaseous State as a

Third State of Matter", Proceedings of the ioth International Congress of the History of Science, ii

(I962) [I964], 85I-854-

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54

J.

B.

GOUGH

some of the authors whom Eller had cited.", As we shall see, it was

through Eller's citation of Hales's Vegetable Staticks that Lavoisier first

became directly acquainted with that work.

After reading Eller's essay, Lavoisier set out to write one of his own.
This document is considerably longer (about three, closely spaced,
octavo pages), and it contains some interesting indications of the direction

of Lavoisier's early speculations on the nature of the cheinical elements.

Like many of his contemporaries in France, Lavoisier accepted the idea
that there were four elements fire, air, water and earth, the first three
of which (fire, air and water) were capable of existing in either "free"
or "fixed" form. This idea of the free and fixed forms of the elements

stems originally from the teachings of Rouelle, and as Henry Guerlac

has pointed out, Lavoisier was to use just such a theory in the Systeme of
I772 to account for the disappearance of heat in changes of state, the

fixation of air in solids, and the water remaining in crystalline substances,

even at temperatures above the boiling point.I2

Near the end of his discourse of I766 on the elements, Lavoisier
raised two questions which were later to play a crucial role in the development of his theory of the gaseous state.
"L'eau a un certain degre de chaleur entre en expansion. Elle se reduit

en vapeur. Est-ce une dissolution qui se fait de l'eau dans l'air, ou bien est-ce
dans le fluide igne'? L'air ne seroit-il pas lui-meme un fluide en expansion."I3

If vapours are dissolved in the atmosphere (as nearly everyone by

the middle of the eighteenth century had come to believe),'4 then the

elastic fluid Eller had produced in the vacuum must really be air. (Since
in vacuo there is nothing for water to dissolve in, it could hardly be water
vapour.) If, on the other hand, vapours are "expansible", not because
of air, but because of heat; if, in other words, Eller's elastic fluid was

only water vapour in an elastic state, then by analogy, perhaps the air,
too, is only a vapour that owes its elastic properties to heat. This latter
alternative is the one Lavoisier was to adopt in his Systeme of I772; it
would provide him with the basic outlines of his theory of the gaseous
state.

III. Lavoisier and Meyer

In his brief commentary on Eller, Lavoisier alluded to a substance
called acidum pingue which he supposed might be combined with the
"1 "Du reste il faut lire les experiences Citees aux memoire [sic] dont jai deja parhM et

consulter les auteurs quil Cite", MSS. Ac. Sci., Lavoisier, I670 Bm.
12 This theory as it exists in the chemistry of Rouelle and Lavoisier has been discussed at
length by Guerlac in Lavoisier-The Crucial rear (Ithaca. New York, I96I). 32-34 and 94-98.

13 MSS. Ac. Sci., Lavoisier, I670 Bn.

14 The most elaborate and convincing arguments in favour of this "solution theory" of
vapours were published by Charles Le Roy (1726-1779); the article "Evaporation", in the
Encyclopidie (Paris, 1756). vi. 123-130.

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Lavoisier's Early Career in Science 55

fire composing Eller's factitious air.'5 Those who are familiar with the
early history of the chemical revolution will doubtless recognize this
acidum pingue as the hypothesis of an obscure Osnabruck chemist, J. F.
Meyer, whose controversial doctrines Lavoisier was to discuss in the

historical introduction to his Opuscules (I774)..i6 Lavoisier evidently read

Meyer's book in P.-F. Dreux's French translation which had just been
published, presumably in the early months of 1766.I7 It is apparent
from several other documents of the period which also contain allusions
to Meyer and his theories, that Lavoisier had studied Meyer's book
quite closely, and judging from his comments, Lavoisier was sufficiently
impressed by Meyer's ideas to have become an adherent to his chemical
system. For example, one of these documents, dated September 1766 and
entitled "Chimie, sur l'acidum pingue", concerns the reduction of lead
carbonate with pitch-" . . . cette experience favorise l'acidum pingue"also the reduction of minium by the same means-" . . . ce qui favorise

merveilleusement le systeme de l'acidum pingue."18

If Lavoisier was as familiar with Meyer as this evidence would
seem to indicate, then he certainly knew of Joseph Black, whose theories
on the nature of lime Meyer's book was, in part, intended to refute.

Nevertheless, Lavoisier's familiarity with Black was at best limited to a

vague awareness of the basic outlines of his fixed-air theory of lime. The
impressive quantitative proofs upon which Black's theory was founded
were notably absent from Meyer's brief and unflattering description.I9
As Guerlac has shown in convincing detail, Black became an important
influence on the course of Lavoisier's chemical researches only after
Lavoisier had already come to appreciate the importance of fixed air in

the process of combustion.zo

IV. Lavoisier's First Mention of Stephen Hales

It is now generally agreed that the British "pneumatic chemnist"

who most profoundly and most immediately influenced the course of
Lavoisier's early career in chemistry was the Rev. Stephen Hales.2"
Hales's brilliantly conceived series of experiments proving that air is a
constituent of many mineral, vegetable, and animal substances attracted
15 "resteroit a examiner. Si cest la matiere du feu latmosphere du soleill pure qui est unie

a leau ou bien Si cette meme matierre y entre dans letat d acidum pingue". MSS. Ac. Sci.,
Lavoisier, I670 Bn.

x6 In Oeuvres de Lavoisier, ed. Dumas and Grimaux, 6 vols. (Paris, i864-93), i, 482-485.
I'7 Essais de chymie sur la chaux vive &c., 2 vols. (Paris, 1766).
I8 MSS. Ac. Sci., Lavoisier, 251, fol. 35. Another dated May I766, is a "plan d'un travail"
on chemical mineralogy; one of the items listed reads, "refaire les experiences de M. Meyer

pour voir Si toute la chaux est soluble". (Ibid., fol. 2I.) A third document, undated but undoubtedly from the same period, cites a page in Meyer's book on the combustion of oils. (Ibid.,
fol. 38.)

19 See Meyer, op. cit. (17), Author's Preface, xxxiii-xxxiv.

20 Guerlac, op. cit. (I2), I 1-24.

2I See H. Guerlac, "The Continental Reputation of Stephen Hales", Archives internationales

d'histoire des sciences, xv (1951), 393-404.

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56

J.

B.

GOUGH

widespread attention on the Continent through Buffon's French translation of his book, the Vegetable Staticks.zz Although Lavoisier almost
certainly knew of Hales's experiments from Rouelle's course of chemical
lectures, it has been proposed that he first became acquainted with the
Vegetable Staticks itself only in the summer of I 772 when Priestly's pamphlet
on the fixation of air in water appeared in French scientific circles.23 There

is, however, some hitherto unnoticed evidence which places Lavoisier's

first familiarity with Hales's book at a much earlier date.

In his essay on the elements, and particularly in that portion of it

dealing with the air, Eller had mentioned the name of Stephen Hales
and cited his book in support of the contention that the air was only a

factitious composition of fire and water.24 In the last sentence of his

commentary on Eller, Lavoisier resolved to consult the authors whom
Eller had cited, and in the context of his immediate interest-i.e. the air-

Lavoisier was undoubtedly referring to Hales.25

That Lavoisier actually carried out his resolve to consult the work of
Hales is shown in a previously unnoticed paragraph in a minor essay
that was delivered to the Secretary of the Academy in December I768,
but which, for some reason, was never published until long after Lavoisier's
death.26 This essay deals with the design, construction, and employment
of a constant immersion hydroineter of Lavoisier's own invention. Near
the end of this essay, Lavoisier considered the possibility of using his
device to solve certain difficult questions of chemical theory. It is significant
that among these questions Lavoisier chose to include the problem of the
fixation of the air.

"Enfin, d'otu vient cet air qui s'echappe avec tant de vivacite dans le
moment de la combinaison, et qui, jouissant de son elasticite naturelle, occupe
sur-le-champ un espace enormement plus grand que celui des deux fluides
dont il est sorti? Cet air existait-il primitivement dans les deux mixtes? Y
etait-il en quelque facon fixe, comme le pensait M. Hales et comme le pensent
encore la plupart des physiciens, ou bien est-ce un air, pour ainsi dire factice
et qui soit le produit de la combinaison, comme le pensait M. Eller?"27
22 La statique des vigitaux et l'analyse de l'air, tr. Buffon (Paris, I 735).
23 Guerlac, op. cit. (12), I00-101.

24 Eller, op. cit. (6), 44.

25 See (iI) above.

26 "Recherches sur les moyens les plus sfurs, les plus exacts et les plus commodes de d6ter-

miner la pesanteur specifique des fluides &c." in Lavoisier, op. cit. (i6), iii, 427-450.
27 Ibid., 450. This passage surely could not have escaped the attention of Meldrum.
That he failed to mention it is probably because he thought it to be an addition made by
Lavoisier sometime after 1772. In discussing this essay (and an earlier companion), Meldrum
warns: "It is necessary to remark that these two memoirs were published, not by Lavoisier but
by Dumas and that, as printed [in the Oeuvres] they are not identical with what was presented
to the Acad6nie des Sciences. Both memoirs are known to have been altered, the first much more
than the second", op. Cit. (I), XiX, 349.
Further research, however, would have shown Meldrum that, whatever additions Lavoisier
might have made, this particular passage with its mention of Hales and Eller and its reflections
on the problem of the air's fixation existed in the original manuscript version that Lavoisier
gave Grandjean de Fouchy on 20 December I 768. This signed and dated copy still exists (MSS.
[continued on page 57

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Lavoisier's Early Career in Science 57

It is evident that Lavoisier by December I768 not only knew of Hales

and had probably consulted his work, but also that he had come to
regard "fixed air" as a problem worthy of the serious attention of the
chemist. Lavoisier was to raise this same question again in the Systeme
of I772, this time to give it an answer in terms of a theory which stated

that the air was not an element, but a compound of a particular fluid
united to the matter of fire.

V. Conclusion
Although much of the foregoing remains to be elaborated in further
publications, it should be clear, even from this brief survey, that Lavoisier's
allegedly new-found concern of I772 with the nature of the elements
(and especially with the nature of the air) was not without antecedents

in the period of his youth. More specifically, Lavoisier's interest in these

questions was first aroused in May 1766, after he read and wrote a brief
commentary on Eller's essay on the elements. It was through Eller that

Lavoisier became aware of the problem of vapours that was later to

play such a significant role in the development of his theory of the gaseous

state, and it was through Eller's citation of Hales that Lavoisier was
led to a first-hand acquaintance with the Vegetable Staticks, the decisive
influence of which on Lavoisier's later career has been conclusively
demonstrated by Professor Guerlac. If I772 is to be regarded (as I think
it must) as a "crucial year" in the development of Lavoisier's career,
then the sense of its "cruciality" will have to be redefined, not in terms of
a beginning of new interests, but in terms of a fundamental change in the
way in which those already awakened interests were manifested.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank Messieurs les Secretaries Perpituels of the Academie des
Sciences for their kindness in allowing me to examine their collection. I should
like also to acknowledge the advice and guidance of Professor Henry Guerlac,
under whose direction this paper was written.

Ac. Sci., Lavoisier, I405) with the above quotation (fol. 50-51) exactly as it was published in the
Oeuvres (excepting, of course, minor changes of spelling and punctuation). Furthermore, it is
obvious from inspection of the manuscript that the passage could not have been inserted at a
later date. It is an integral part of the text (i.e. not a marginal notation), written in a hand
consistent with the remainder of the document and in the same ink. The manuscript was bound
with ribbon and Grandjean de Fouchy's signature appears with the date both on the first and
last of its numbered pages.

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