Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: French Revolution

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was a Chemist during the French Revolution. He is mainly known for his breakdown of Aristotle’s four elements, his establishment of the conservation of mass, and his theory of what verifies an experiment and its data. However, he was also widely known for his involvement in politics that eventually led to his demise in the middle of his work. Lavoisier grew up as a part of the French bourgeois with a comfortable lifestyle and access to a good education (Cobb and Goldwhite 153). His social status came not only from his father’s career as a lawyer, but from his mother’s inheritance. Because he was able to afford an education, Lavoisier attended school to study the law. However, he began attending Chemistry courses in the Jardin du Roi (Cobb and Goldwhite 153). Despite

The water transmutation research explored the belief that “repeated and prolonged heating caused water to transmute into earth” (Cobb and Goldwhite 153), which came from the observation of when water evaporates, it leaves a water spot. Lavoisier decided to explore this theory by putting distilled water in a sealed glass and heated in for 101 days. When he weighed the sealed container, he found no change in weight from before it was heated. Then, he weighed the water and dry container separately after finding floating pieces of unknown material in the water and discovered that it was residue from the container walls. From this experiment, Lavoisier “refuted an established theory of alchemists and demonstrated that valid chemical theory must be experimentally verifiable” (Cobb and Goldwhite 153-154). Attempting to recreate the same data over and over again is still used today and continued to be a part of Lavoisier’s research throughout his life. Although, this same method would one day lead him to be accused of