THE LAVOISIER MONUMENT

The Legacy of Lavoisier

Lavoisier and the Caloric Theory

PROFESSIONAL historians of science generally recognize the importance of Lavoisier's theory of heat. However, it commonly receives scant attention in the historical treatment of his chemical theories except perhaps as an example illustrating his conservatism and giving the impression that the caloric theory, although perhaps important in the development of ideas on the nature of heat, is indepe...

Monument to the discoveries.

A week ago I was standing with my wife by the River Tagus in Lisbon, next to the Monument to the Discoveries. The monument is at the spot where Vasco da Gama set out to discover the southeast passage from Europe to Asia, past the Cape of Good Hope. Vasco’s discovery marked the beginning of the Portuguese maritime empire. At the furthest tip of Europe, Portugal was perfectly situated to found su...

Imaging the experiments on respiration and transpiration of Lavoisier and Séguin: two unknown drawings by Madame Lavoisier.

This paper presents two hitherto unknown drawings by Marie-Anne-Pierrette Lavoisier dating to the early 1790s that illustrate the experiments on respiration and transpiration of her husband Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his assistant Armand Séguin. These works may be associated with the well-known sepia drawings that were published for the first time by Edouard Grimaux in 1888. Details containe...

Antoine Lavoisier--Father of Modern Chemistry.

ANTOINE LAVOISIER FAThER OF mOdERN chEmISTRy Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) was born in Paris. One of the great figures in science, he is often called father of modern chemistry. Priestly, in 1774 had heated brick red calx (mercuric oxide), obtaining back mercury, and in addition a combustible gas, with most unusual properties, He called it “dephlogisticated air” (oxygen). It was held th...