Antoine Lavoisier, founder of the oxygen theory of combustion, leader of 18th century chemistry, and published author of “Elementary Treatise of Chemistry”. Born in Paris, France on August 26th, 1743, Antoine Lavoisier was born as the only son into a wealthy bourgeois family. In his young life, he showed an abnormal amount of public concern and studiousness. He was introduce to Collège Mazarins’ studies and sciences, and soon after went to study law. Due to the lacking demands of the students at Paris’s law faculty, Lavoisier was able to spend much of his time attending private and public lectures on chemistry and physics. He was able to work under the tutelage of leading naturalists. Lavoisier, like his father and grandfather before him, was …show more content…
Although chemistry writings had plenty of facts and information, in its time there were few people who agreed to it. Chemists in Lavoisier’s’ field focused more on mixts (compounds). For example, salts formed when salts combine with alkalis. This field hoped that by identifying the base substances, they could construct the theories to explain the properties of compounds. It was previously claimed that the elements were distinguishable by certain physical properties: water and air were incompressible. Air could be expanded or compressed. Fire could either be controlled or measured. Lavoisier believed that matter was neither created nor destroyed. Shortly before entering the Academy of Sciences in 1768, Lavoisier received a considerable inheritance from his mother’s estate, which he used to purchase an interest in a financial enterprise known as the. The General Farm was a partnership that had a contract with the royal government to collect certain sales and excise taxes, such as those on salt and tobacco. At the beginning of each financial cycle the Tax Farmers lent money to the government and were subsequently reimbursed through tax