Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Commemorative Booklet PDF
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Commemorative Booklet PDF
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Commemorative Booklet PDF
CHEMICAL LANDMARK
T
he importance of the end in view
prompted me to undertake all this work,
which seemed to me destined to bring
of the charcoal had united with the calx:
1
a metal or an organic substance with that part of
Combustion and the Attack common air he termed eminently respirable. Two
on Phlogiston years later, he announced to the Royal Academy of
Sciences in Paris that he found that most acids con-
In experiments with phosphorus and sulfur,
tained this eminently respirable air and, therefore,
both of which burned readily, Lavoisier showed that
was calling it oxygne, from the two Greek words for
they gained weight by combining with air. With lead
acid generator.
calx, he was able to capture a large amount of air
Lavoisier began his full-scale attack on phlogis-
that was liberated when the calx was heated. To a
ton in 1783, claiming that Stahls phlogiston is
suspicious Lavoisier, these results were not explained
imaginary. According to biographer Douglas
by phlogiston.
McKie, the paper Lavoisier read before the
Although
Academy of Sciences exposed . . . the many weak-
Lavoisier now
nesses of the accepted chemical philosophy and
realized that com-
reveals . . . Lavoisiers great powers of reasoning and
bustion actually
exposition. Calling phlogiston a veritable Proteus
involved air, the
that changes its form every instant, Lavoisier
exact composition
asserted that it was time to lead chemistry back to a
of air at that time
stricter way of thinking and to distinguish what is
was not clearly
fact and observation from what is system and
understood. In
hypothesis. As a starting point, he offered his the-
August 1774, the
ory of combustion, in which oxygen now played the
eminent English
central role. Lavoisier did not expect his ideas to be
natural philoso-
pher and phlogis-
tonist Joseph
Priestley met with Lavoisiers American Legacy
Lavoisier in Paris.
Pierre-Samuel du Pont was a close friend of
The gasometer used by Lavoisier as illustrated in the Trait
He described how
lmentaire de Chimie, plate VIII. he had recently Antoine Lavoisier. The two first met when
heated mercury Lavoisier was collecting taxes at the Ferme
calx (a red powder) and collected a gas in which a Gnrale and du Pont was gaining a reputation as
candle burned vigorously. After returning from a political writer and economist. He was elected
Paris, Priestley found that a mouse could breathe to the Constituent Assembly in 1789 as a dele-
this air and live much longer than a mouse that gate from the third estate of Nemours. During the
breathed common air. At the time, respiration was French Revolution, du Pont, who supported a
thought to involve the exhalation of phlogiston, constitutional monarchy, volunteered to help
which eventually saturated the common air. Thus, in guard Louis XVI when a mob attacked the palace
a confined space, candles were extinguished and in 1792. Eventually arrested, du Pont was spared
mice died. Priestley believed his pure air enhanced death at the guillotine because of the fall of
respiration and caused candles to burn longer Maximilien Robespierre, the architect of the
because it was free of phlogiston. For this reason, he Reign of Terror. Du Pont sought a new life in the
called the gas that he obtained from decomposing United States in 1799, because there, persecuted
mercury calx dephlogisticated air. men can find safety . . . [and] fortunes can be
In Paris, the intrigued Lavoisier repeated rebuilt. Having learned the newest methods of
Priestleys experiment with mercury and other metal gunpowder manufacturing from Lavoisier, du
calces. He eventually concluded that common air Ponts son Eleuthre Irne opened a powder
was not a simple substance. Instead, he argued, there works near Wilmington, DE, in 1802. He wanted
were two components: one that combined with the to call the business Lavoisier Mills, to show his
metal and supported respiration and the other an gratitude to the person whose kindness toward
asphyxiant that did not support either combustion me was the primary cause of my undertaking. His
or respiration. By 1777, Lavoisier was ready to pro- father, however, had other ideas, and it was orga-
pose a new theory of combustion that excluded nized under the name du Pont de Nemours and
phlogiston. Combustion, he said, was the reaction of Company.
2
adopted at once, because those who believed in [defenders] heads a destructive fire of incontrovert-
phlogiston would adopt new ideas only with diffi- ible chemical fact.
culty. Lavoisier put his faith in the younger genera- To Lavoisier, it was time to rid chemistry of
tion who would be more open to new concepts. He every kind of impediment that delays its advance
was not disappointed. with a reform that included a new language. Louis
Bernard Guyton de
A New Chemistry Emerges Morveau, Claude Louis
Berthollet, Antoine
In 1766, Englishman Henry Cavendish iso- Franois Fourcroy, and
lated a gas that he called inflammable air because Lavoisier adopted the long-
it burned readily. For Lavoisier, combustion meant neglected idea of an ele-
combining with oxygen; however, until he could ment as originally proposed
explain the combustion of inflammable air, some by Robert Boyle more than
would still doubt his new chemistry. Priestley noted a century earlier. We shall
that when inflammable air and common air were content ourselves here
ignited with a spark in a closed vessel, a small with regarding as simple all
Drawing by
amount of dew formed on the glass walls. When the substances that we cannot decompose. They Mme Lavoisier of
Cavendish repeated the experiment, he found that retained the names from the past of many of these M. Lavoisier
the dew was actually water. Cavendish explained conducting a
simple substances, or elements. But when an ele- respiration
the results in terms of phlogiston and assumed the ment combined with another element, the com- experiment.
water was present in each of the two airs before igni- pounds name now reflected something about its Mme Lavoisier is
pictured recording
tion. In June 1783, Lavoisier learned of the chemical composition. For example, a calx was the the laboratory
Cavendish experiment and immediately reacted combination of a metal and oxygen, therefore, zinc proceedings.
oxygen with inflammable air, obtaining water in a calx became zinc oxide. Lavoisier and his colleagues
very pure state. He correctly concluded that water predicted that if the new system was undertaken
was not an element but a compound of oxygen and upon sound principles . . . it will naturally adapt
inflammable air, or hydrogen as it is now known. To itself to future discoveries. Withstanding the test of
support his claim, Lavoisier decomposed water into time, the basic system is still in use today.
oxygen and inflammable air. Lavoisiers new system of chemistry was laid
The last objection to discarding phlogiston out for everyone to see in the Trait lmentaire de
could now be eliminated. It was known that when a Chimie (Elements of Chemistry), published in Paris in
metal dissolved in an aqueous acid solution, it pro- 1789. As a textbook, the Trait incorporated the
duced a salt and inflammable air: foundations of modern chemistry. It spelled out the
metal + acid + water ?salt + inflammable air influence of heat on chemical reactions, the nature
of gases, the reactions of acids and bases to form
which Cavendish believed was phlogiston: salts, and the apparatus used to perform chemical
experiments. For the first time, the Law of the
metal (calx + phlogiston) + acid ? Conservation of Mass was defined, with Lavoisier
salt (calx + acid) + inflammable air (phlogiston) asserting that . . . in every operation an equal
quantity of matter exists both before and after the
Now that the composition of water was operation. Perhaps the most striking feature of the
known, Lavoisier offered a different interpretation: Trait was its Table of Simple Substances, the first
metal + acid + water (inflammable air + oxygen) ? modern listing of the then-known elements.
calx (metal + oxygen) + acid + inflammable air ? A contentious Lavoisier would later proclaim:
salt (calx + acid) + inflammable air This theory is not, as I hear it called, the theory of
the French chemists. It is mine. It is a right that I lay
For example, when zinc reacts with an acid, it claim to by the judgment of my contemporaries and
combines with the oxygen of the water to form a at the bar of history. Two years later, in 1791, the
calx, which then reacts with the acid to form a salt. results were obvious. All young chemists, he
The other component of the water, hydrogen, is mused, adopt the theory, and from that I conclude
released as a gas. According to McKie, This was a that the revolution in chemistry has come to pass.
new Lavoisier . . . raining down upon the His legacy endures more than 200 years later.
3
THE LIFE OF ANTOINE-LAURENT LAVOISIER
(17431794)
Lavoisier became further involved in public
L
avoisier was a Parisian through and through
and a child of the enlightenment, wrote
biographer Henry Guerlac. The son of Jean-
life in 1775, when he was appointed one of four
commissioners of the Gunpowder Commission,
Antoine and milie Punctis Lavoisier, he entered charged with reforming and improving the produc-
Mazarin College when he was 11. There, he tion of gunpowder. Lavoisier moved his residence
received a sound training in the arts and classics and and laboratory to the arsenal in Paris, where for
an exposure to science that was the best in Paris. almost 20 years it drew many distinguished visitors.
Forgoing his baccalaureate of He devoted several hours every day and one full day
arts degree, Lavoisier yielded a week to experiments in his laboratory. According
to the influence of his father to his wife: It was for him a day of happiness; some
and studied law, receiving a friends who shared his views and some young men
law degree in 1763. But his proud to be admitted to the honor of collaborating
interest in science prevailed, in his experiments assembled in the morning in the
kindled by the geologist Jean- laboratory. There they lunched; there they debated.
tienne Guettard, whom he . . . It was there that you could have heard this man
met at Mazarin. After gradua- with his precise mind, his clear intelligence, his high
tion, he began a long collabo- genius, the loftiness of his philosophical principles
ration with Guettard on a illuminating his conversation.
geological survey of France. Ironically, Lavoisier, the ardent and zealous
Lavoisier showed an chemical revolutionary, eventually was caught in
early inclination for quantita- the web of intrigue of a political revolution. The
tive measurements and soon Trait was published in 1789, the same year as the
began applying his interest in storming of the Bastille. A year later, Lavoisier com-
chemistry to the analysis of plained that the state of public affairs in France . . .
geological samples, especially has temporarily retarded the progress of science and
gypsum. Because of his flair for careful analyses and distracted scientists from the work that is most pre-
his prodigious output, he was elected to the cious to them.
Academy of Sciences at the age of 25. At the same Lavoisier, however, could not escape the wrath
time, Lavoisier used part of the fortune he had of Jean-Paul Marat, the adamant revolutionary, who
inherited from his mother to buy a share in the began publicly denouncing him in January 1791.
Ferme Gnrale, a private group that collected vari- During the Reign of Terror, arrest orders were issued
ous taxes for the government. This fateful decision for all of the Ferme Gnrale, including Lavoisier.
would later cost him his life at the height of his On the morning of May 8, 1794, he was tried and
intellectual powers. convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal as a princi-
He married Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze on pal in the conspiracy against the people of France.
Dec. 16, 1771; he was 28, she was 14. The marriage He was sent to the guillotine that afternoon. The
was a happy one, according to McKie. Mme next day, his friend, the French mathematician
Lavoisier was possessed of a high intelligence; she Joseph-Louis Lagrange, remarked that it took them
took a great interest in her husbands scientific work only an instant to cut off that head, and a hundred
and rapidly equipped herself to share in his labors. years may not produce another like it.
Later, she helped him in the laboratory and drew
sketches of his experiments. She made many of the
entries in his laboratory notebooks. She learned
English and translated a number of scientific mem-
oirs into French.
4
FURTHER READING
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Lavoisier: Mmoires dune rvolu- Henry Guerlac, LavoisierThe Crucial Year (Ithaca, New York:
tion (Paris: Flammarion, 1993). Cornell University Press, 1961). The background and origin of his
first experiments on combustion in 1772.
Marco Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter: The Definition of
Chemistry from Agricola to Lavoisier (Canton, MA: Science Hist. Henry Guerlac, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, in Dictionary of
Publications, 1993). Scientific Biography, Charles C. Gillispie, Ed. (New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1973), 8:6691.
Patrice Bret (d.), Dbats et chantiers autour de Lavoisier et de
la rvolution chimique, Revue dHistoire des Sciences, Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life:
XLVIII/12 (1995). An Exploration of Scientific Creativity (Madison, WI: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
Patrice Bret, Lavoisier et lEncyclopdie mthodique: le manuscrit
Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Antoine Lavoisier: The Next Crucial
des rgisseurs des poudres et salptres pour le Dictionnaire de
Year or The Sources of His Quantitative Method in Chemistry
lArtillerie (1787), Florence, Leo S. Olschki (coll. Biblioteca di
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
Nuncius. Studi e testi, 28), 1997.
Douglas McKie, Antoine Lavoisier: The Father of Modern
Maurice Daumas, Lavoisier, thoricien et exprimentateur (Paris: Chemistry (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1935).
PUF, 1955).
Douglas McKie, Antoine Lavoisier: Scientist, Economist, Social
Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyre (d.), Il y a 200 ans Lavoisier: Reformer (New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1952).
Actes du Colloque de lAcadmie des Sciences, mai 1994 (Paris: Jean-Pierre Poirier, Lavoisier (Paris d.: Pygmalion/Grard
Tec et Doc Lavoisier, 1994). Watelet, 1993); Lavoisier, Chemist, Biologist, Economist
Arthur Donovan (ed.), The chemical revolution: Essays in (American ed.: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
reinterpretation, Osiris, second series, vol. 4 (1988). 1996).
Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration and uvres de Lavoisier. d. Jean-Baptiste Dumas, Edouard
Revolution (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1996). Grimaux, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 18651893, 6 vols.
uvres de Lavoisier. Correspondance. Publi sous les auspices du
Denis I. Duveen, Madame Lavoisier, Chymia, 4 (1953):
Comit Lavoisier de lAcadmie des Sciences; vols. 13
1329.
(17631783), d. Ren Fric; vols. 45 (17841788), d.
Michelle Goupil (d.), Lavoisier et la Rvolution chimique Michelle Goupil; vol. 6 (17891791), d. Patrice Bret. Paris,
(Palaiseau, SABIXEcole polytechnique, 1992). Acadmie des Sciences, 19551997 (vols. 78, forthcoming).
Edouard Grimaux, Lavoisier, 17431794, daprs sa correspondance, The Friends of Lavoisier Web site
ses manuscrits, ses papiers de famille et dautres documents indits; 2e http://perso.cybercable.fr/histoire/lavoisier/
d. (Paris: Alcan, 1896; reprint, Paris, J. Gabay, 1992).
Designations of sites and artifacts note events or developments de rallier ses thories les chimistes franais et trangers. Ses papiers, conservs dans les
archives de lAcadmie des sciences, portent un tmoignage vivant de la conception et de la
of clear historical importance to chemists and chemical engi- maturation de cette rvolution chimique qui jeta les bases de la chimie moderne.
8 juin 1999
neers. Collections mark the contributions of a number of American Chemical Society Acadmie des sciences Socit franaise de chimie