Antoine Lavoisier was born on August 26, 1743 in France’s capital city, Paris. His family was well off financially because his father, Jean Lavoisier was a lawyer in the Paris Parliament. Also, his mother, Emilie Punctis was able to leave him a large amount of money when she died in 1748 because her family had a successful butchery business. During ages 11 and 18, Lavoisier studied at College des Quatre-Nations, also called College Mazarin, which was a college of the University of Paris. He went there to study law, but was able to spend a lot of time attending public and private lectures on chemistry and physics. Even though he was very interested in science, his father encouraged him that science was just a hobby, not a serious profession. This led him to enroll at the University of Paris law school at 18, aiming to …show more content…
In the following years, Lavoisier conducted many other successful experiments and tests. This is because he was very passionate about accurate measurements, focusing on quantitative data over qualitative data. After doing many of these experiments, he noticed that when phosphorus or sulfur are burned in air the products are acidic and also weigh more than the original phosphorus or sulfur. This meant that the elements combined with something in the air to produce acids. Two years later, a scientist named Joseph Priestley visited Paris. He told Lavoisier about the gas produced when he decomposed the compound now called mercury oxide. This gas supported combustion much more powerfully than normal air. Even though Priestley discovered the element, Lavoisier was the one to name it oxygen. Further research allowed Lavoisier to find out that oxygen made up 20 percent of air, and was vital for combustion and respiration. This helped prove his oxygen theory, putting an end to the false phlogiston theory. Also, during this time he had carried out extensive