Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

Taylor JoynerCore 1-210/21/07

Where Antoine Lavoisier was born

• Born on August 26, 1743

• To a wealthy Paris family

• His father was a lawyer

• His mother died when he was 5 years old

• But he died on 05/08/1794 of Guillotined

How did he start

• He went to law school to fulfill the family dream

• At the age of 21 he began to fulfill his dream to study mathematics

• He studied astronomy, botany, & geology under great scientist of the time

Along the Way

• His work with geology and his winning essay on the best means of lightning the streets of a large city gained him an elected membership at the age of 25 into France’s prestigious Academy of Sciences

• He may not be remembered for grandiose experiments, but he is responsible for having forced the evolution of a world which was

firmly ensconced in the doctrines of alchemists. • In 1768, Lavoisier made his first lecture to the Académie Rodale des

Sciences, an analysis of gypsum and its calcination into plaster of

Paris.

Works of Antoine

• Law

• From Mineralogy to Geology

• Meteorology

• Chemistry in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

• Aristotle's Four Elements

• The Theory of Phlogiston

• TransmutationsLavoisier's Method

• The Chemistry of Gases

• The Notion of Element

• The Analysis and Synthesis of Water

• The Contents of the Chemical Revolution

Works Continued

• Public Health

• Food hygiene

• Hospitals

• Medicine

• Prisons

• Behavioral Psychology

• The Physiology of Respiration

• The Physiology of Perspiration

• The Animal Machine

• The Physiology of Nutrition

• The Chemistry of Life

Works Continued

• The General Farm• The Gunpowder and Saltpeter Administration• Spinning Mills and Bleaching Workshops • Aerostats, Montgolfières and Charlières

• Scientific Agronomy • The Committee on Agriculture• The Provincial Assembly of Orléans• The Discount Bank• Reflections on Assignats• The National Treasury

• The Territorial Wealth of the Kingdom of France

Works Continued

• The Advisory Board for Arts and Trades

• The Lycée des Arts

• Reflections on Public Education

• The Unification of the System of Weights and Measures

Behind Antoine

• In 1771 he married 13 year old Marie-Anne Perette Paulze

• She proved to be scientific colleague, by learning English

• She drew sketches of apparatuses & laboratory & the illustrations for the book Elementaire de Chemie

Famous For What?

• Lavoisier was a polymath. He made advancements in minerology, ballooning, street lighting, and even established a model farm and an organization for famine relief — putting at least some of the money he made collecting taxes to good use. Though he wasn't really educated in natural history, Lavoisier also made exceptional contributions to geology.

Sedimentation layers of the Earth

• In 1766, Lavoisier began working with the geologist Jean-Etienne Guettard to create geological maps of France. At the time, most geologists believed that earth's ancient landmasses had been submerged under a giant ocean, and that this universal sea was responsible for the layers of sediments they found. Lavoisier's studies led him to reject this notion for a more complicated (and accurate) explanation

• In his mapping efforts, Lavoisier recognized two distinct kinds of sediment layers. One kind often contained thin, delicate, well-preserved shells that must have been deposited gently. The other contained no well-preserved shells, but lots of rounded pebbles. Lavoisier deduced that the pebbles had been smoothed by agitated water. He named the first kind of sediment pelagic beds, and the second kind of sediment littoral beds. Further, he hypothesized that the two kinds of beds resulted from alternately rising and falling sea level, and that the roughened-up littoral beds were nearer coastlines

Sedimentation layers of the Earth

• So many advances and retreats of the sea, and such a peaceful deposition of pelagic sediments suggested to Lavoisier "an immense span of years and centuries." He also recognized that some sediment layers preceded any discernible fossils, but more recent sediments contained them. He ultimately concluded that the earth was originally devoid of life, then developed land-based vegetation, then developed animals on land and in the sea.

  From The Lying Stones of Marrakech by Stephen Jay Gould 

Quotes said by Laviosier

• We must clean house thoroughly, for they have made use of an enigmatic language peculiar to themselves, which in general presents one meaning for the adept and another for the vulgar, and at the same time contains nothing that is rationally intelligible either for one or for the other." (1)

• This theory (burning) is not, as I hear it called, the theory of the French chemists. It is mine. It is a right that I claim by the judgment of my contemporaries and at the bar of history. (5) And: All young chemists adopt the theory and from that I conclude that the revolution in chemistry has come to pass. (5)

QuotesContinued

• “A man cannot live more than 24 hours unless he has at least three cubic meters of air that is being constantly replaced.”

• “It is almost possible to predict one or two days in advance, within a rather broad range of probability, what the weather is going to be; it is even thought that it will not be impossible to publish daily forecasts, which would be very useful to society”

• Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, the means of expression which is the simplest, most exact and best adapted to its object, is both a language and an analytical method. In short, the art of

reasoning can be reduced to a well-constructed” • "I am young and avid for glory."

Facts About Antoine

• Lavoisier was so serious to his research that he once put himself on a milk and bread diet To be able to devote more time to his experiments

• Antoine Lavoisier was included, along with Benjamin Franklyn in a Royal commission set up by King Louis XVI to investigate Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer, the famous hypnotist who believed an occult force he called "animal magnetism" flowed through him, giving

him the power to cure patients from a wide variety of ailments.

• In 1772, Lavoisier debunked the  Phlogiston theory, by showing that burning both sulfur and phosphorus increases their mass, producing acid forming gases.

Facts Continued

• Lavoisier once used two very large convex lenses to focus the rays of the sun into igniting a container full of alcohol.

• In 1766, Lavoisier was awarded a medal by King Louis XIII, for his street lamp design.

• Antoine Lavoisier assisted  geologist Jean-Étienne Guettard in mapping the geology and mineralogy of France, and later, in 1776, he developed his own theory of the stratification of the earth, based on his

observations of the cyclic advancement and retreat of the sea.

Fact That Impacted Society Greatly

Antoine Lavioser impacted society greatly with his design of the street lamp. When he designed the street lamb it allowed the people of the generation and future to come to see at night. This invention was a major impact, without the street lamp people could not see at night. Which intern would cause problems with injury and death. Antoine was a brilliant man with great ideas. If it wasn’t for him where would society be, when it came to walking down the street at night? I’ll tell you in trouble, that’s where! So that would be one of Antoine’s many, impacts on society!

Quote About Lavoisier

• “He discovered no new body, no new property, no natural phenomenon previously unknown; but all ‘the facts established by him were the necessary consequences of the labours of those who preceded him. His merit, his immortal glory, consists in this—that he infused into the body of the science a new spirit; but all the members of that body were already in existence, and rightly joined together.” Stated: Justus von Liebig

Summary of life• Lavoisier called a revolution in his science. This revolution includes the

replacement of phlogiston by oxygen in the theory of combustion, the adoption of the systematic nomenclature in use ever since, the dependence on the principle of conservation of matter, the rigorously quantitative mode of analysis. Due weight must be given to the importance of his study of respiration both for physiology and for the early history of organic chemistry. But science is always a collective enterprise, and the parts of others, of predecessors, associates, and opponents, must be explained; here we have the whole cast, French, British, and European, and not merely the protagonist, the_ultimately tragic protagonist. Putting matters in perspective does not entail any belittling of Lavoisier's stature nor any subordination of the content of his science to the social and political context. Still, the overall story of the chemical revolution is familiar, and it is mainly in the account of Lavoisier's further concerns that new ground can be explored. Beyond the mere facts of his having been a partner in the Tax Farm, an administrator of the Gunpowder Service, and a model farmer, little has been known of how Lavoisier actually spent his days. As a rule, chemistry occupied only the hours before breakfast and in the evenings.

Citations• Matson, Bruce. "Antoine Lavoisier." Bruce Matson's Home page. 25,

Sept. 2001. Greighton Univesity. 9 Oct 2007 <http://mattson.creighton.edu/History_Gas_Chemistry/Lavoisier.html>.

• "Antoine Lavoisier Quotes." thinkexist.com. 2006. 10 Oct 2007 <http://thinkexist.com/quotes/antoine_lavoisier/>.

• "Antoine Laurent Lavoisier - The Gifted Student." <http://www.antoine-lavoisier.com/antoine_lavoiser-biography_001.htm. 13, February 2003 . 21 Oct 2007 <http://www.antoine- lavoisier.com/antoine_lavoiser-biography_001.htm>.

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Citations

• Scott, Michon . "Antoine Lavoisier." http://www.strangescience.net/lavoisier.htm. 1, April

2006. Rocky Road. 21 Oct 2007 <http://www.strangescience.net/lavoisier.htm>.

• Poirier, Jean-Pierre . "Life and Works ." http://historyofscience.free.fr/Lavoisier-Friends/a_contents_lavoisier.html. 21 Oct 2007 <http://historyofscience.free.fr/Lavoisier-Friends/a_contents_lavoisier.html>.

• Simmons, John. The Scientific 100. 1st. Secaucus,New Jersey: Carol Communications, Inc., 1996.

The End