But, since the construction never commenced, he instead turned his focus to purifying the water from the Seine. The goal was to bring water from the river Yvette into Paris so that the citizens could have clean drinking water. Three years later in 1768, he focused on a new project to design an aqueduct. The first instance of this occurred in 1765, when he submitted an essay on improving urban street lighting to the French Academy of Sciences. Lavoisier was a humanitarian-he cared deeply about the people in his country and often concerned himself with improving the livelihood of the population by agriculture, industry, and the sciences. While Lavoisier is commonly known for his contributions to the sciences, he also dedicated a significant portion of his fortune and work toward benefitting the public. Lavoisier as a social reformer Lavoisier conducting an experiment on respiration in the 1770s Research benefitting the public good In 1769, he worked on the first geological map of France. In 1768 Lavoisier received a provisional appointment to the Academy of Sciences. In 1764 he read his first paper to the French Academy of Sciences, France's most elite scientific society, on the chemical and physical properties of gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate), and in 1766 he was awarded a gold medal by the King for an essay on the problems of urban street lighting. In collaboration with Guettard, Lavoisier worked on a geological survey of Alsace-Lorraine in June 1767. From 1763 to 1767, he studied geology under Jean-Étienne Guettard. His first chemical publication appeared in 1764. Lavoisier's devotion and passion for chemistry were largely influenced by Étienne Condillac, a prominent French scholar of the 18th century. He attended lectures in the natural sciences. Lavoisier's education was filled with the ideals of the French Enlightenment of the time, and he was fascinated by Pierre Macquer's dictionary of chemistry. However, he continued his scientific education in his spare time. Lavoisier received a law degree and was admitted to the bar, but never practiced as a lawyer. Lavoisier entered the school of law, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1763 and a licentiate in 1764. In the philosophy class he came under the tutelage of Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, a distinguished mathematician and observational astronomer who imbued the young Lavoisier with an interest in meteorological observation, an enthusiasm which never left him. In his last two years (1760–1761) at the school, his scientific interests were aroused, and he studied chemistry, botany, astronomy, and mathematics. Lavoisier began his schooling at the Collège des Quatre-Nations, University of Paris (also known as the Collège Mazarin) in Paris in 1754 at the age of 11. The son of an attorney at the Parlement of Paris, he inherited a large fortune at the age of five upon the death of his mother. At the height of the French Revolution, he was charged with tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco, and was guillotined despite appeals to spare his life in recognition of his contributions to science.īiography The Collège des Quatre-Nations in Paris Early life and educationĪntoine-Laurent Lavoisier was born to a wealthy family of the nobility in Paris on 26 August 1743. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research. 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. Lavoisier was a powerful member of a number of aristocratic councils, and an administrator of the Ferme générale. His wife and laboratory assistant, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, became a renowned chemist in her own right. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and discovered that, although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He named oxygen (1778), recognizing it as an element, and also recognized hydrogen as an element (1783), opposing the phlogiston theory. Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion. It is generally accepted that Lavoisier's great accomplishments in chemistry stem largely from his changing the science from a qualitative to a quantitative one. Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( / l ə ˈ v w ɑː z i eɪ/ lə- VWAH-zee-ay French: 26 August 1743 – ), also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution, was a French nobleman and chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology.
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